Damn. Just came to me. The ultimate solution. So simple, so cheap.

Ban rear mirrors!

Do they really need to see the car right behind them? Normally, in a family car, you need it to be able to avoid hitting cars that is passing you or whatever, but in F1 it is the other way around - when you see someone going out to pass you you steer in that direction to prevent the pass.

So if the mirror was angled in such a way that there is a big blind spot until it is too late to block, passing would be easier.

Safety aspects? I am sure there is some. Needs to be weighted and and analyzed, but my feeling is that rear mirrors cause more accidents than they prevent.

Umm wouldn't there be more incidents of cars driving straight into those trying to overtake them?

That'd work if the problem was all the overtaking that was being prevented by blocking. I don't see how this creates overtaking attempts.

There's a reason most cars finish a GP: rear view mirrors.

Bad idea. This would end in one big crash. Actually I think that we will see a significant improvement in overtaking next year with the ban of DDD.

Rearviewmirrors are there for safety and don't forget, blue flags too.

It would not create overtaking attempts directly, but since the driver ahead would not know exactly where to put the car, two things could happen that would make it easier to pass.

1. Since you do not know exactly what the car behind is doing, you will need to pick your line early, either defense or for optimum speed
2. If he choose defense and driver behind is not really attacking, an attack might be successful at the next corner

As it is, they are all so good at driving defensively that you need plenty of speed advantage to make a pass. Regardless if you are able to drive close behind or not.
The gamble on defense/speed would make the effective speed difference between cars bigger.

You can still have them, just not allow them to show the car behind until it is too late to block.

Contrary to road traffic, no F1 car is suddenly going to switch lanes without a good reason, they are all following the same racing line. Therefore they use the mirrors for different reasons than you and me do while we drive to work.

Race starts will be fun to watch

Spa '98 anyone?

Electronics. Then can connect the mirrors to the engine map that they use for the race start

Remember Webber's crash in Valencia? That would happen plenty more times if wing mirrors were banned.

/discussion.

/discussion?
Sorry, but you bring up an accident that was basically caused by the mirrors as an example of why they must stay due to safety grounds?

I agree... Jacques V once said it too, and he knows what he's talking about.

+1

Jacques Villeneuve didn't spend much of his career being about to be lapped though. Maybe on CART ovals, but the technique there is a motorcycle-style 'hold your line'.

If MotoGP is anything to go by, we had some great passing at Laguna Seca that was a result of rider in front anticipating a passing attempt and the rider behind anticipating a defensive line and passed after the turn instead. If you actually see that yo are in fact not blocking anyone, just simply driving the wrong line, you retake the good line ASAP. Therefore I conclude, in all my wisdom, that by limiting rear vision you do indeed create more overtaking opportunities.

Someone being lapped should not really look too much in the mirrors anyway, they should drive in a predictable way and that means they should keep their lines but go a bit slower and brake a bit earlier. It is for the lapping car to overtake. As soon as lapped traffic start to drive left and right to avoid traffic, new danger is created since after a left turn there is often one going to the right.

But as I mentioned before, it would be dead easy to have electronics to enable rear vision at starts and when you get blue flags.

Don't be silly.

Who watches for blue flags in their mirrors?

Hope they're not only using their mirrors to watch for yellow flags!

If there were no mirrors drivers would not put their car in posistions which could take them, or other cars out.

You wont get a driver in front suddenly changing line because someones behind...

Maybe get rid of mirrors, but include spotters...

this idea simply makes defending impossible. So does movable rear wing - equally bad. Or even this is worse cause it seriously makes all much more dangerous.

It makes blocking difficult but does not affect defensive driving. I do not think it affects safety at all. Or rather, it makes defensive driving more of a gamble (it can backfire), but they can still do it.

But the problem isn't that they're making moves and getting blocked. It's that they so rarely get a chance to make a move.

how can you say it doesn't affect safety? Instead of seeing little, they would see nothing. Great. I wuld give them bigger mirrors, not remove them.

Very dangerous in my opinion. It may not be such a big issue when there's only two cars involved but what when there's three ? The guy in the 2nd car doesn't know he's got someone behind him and he makes a move to attack #1 on the left exactly when #3 started the same move on him.

I can see touching wheels and flying F1's.

Really? Say driver A is harmlessly driving around a circuit and driver B is catching up. Apart from a radio message saying "Driver B is close behind you", driver A has no real idea where B is. Now say driver B attempts an overtaking move on A at a corner by taking the inside, B moves into place while A, blissfully ignorant as to the position of B, turns into the corner as normal when BAM! A hits B, both are damaged and possibly out of the race. Driver A had no idea driver B was even coming up beside him, and hence was not able to give B enough room to complete the move.

While it may stop any blocking on a straight, any pass on a corner would be impossible, as a driver would quite rightly not wish to make a move if the outcome will quite likely be retirement.

Read the suggestion. Periphery vision would not be affected.

And when they get the chance, they get blocked. As you know, when driving defensive lines, you lose time. If you take defensive line just when you see someone move, the following car will have the same disadvantage as the car ahead. When the car ahead see that the car following resumes racing line, he does it as well. If he does not know where the car behind is, car in front would have to:

A) Keep defensive line all the way through the braking area
or
B) open the door just before the braking area

If he choose A and the driver behind is on optimum line, there will probably be a passing opportunity after the next corner, if he choose B, there is a passing opportunity at this very corner. Then option A & B is repeated until a pass is made.

That would make passing about as exciting as lapping a backmarker. Btw, how would lapped cars get out of the way safely? Sure they see the blue flag, but how are they to know how far away the car is, how quickly it is closing, which side he will pass on, whether there are other cars behind him, etc, et al.

As I said - there is no problem whatsoever to electronically enable full rear view. From the top of my head it could be solved like this:

Driver have a button on the steering wheel to activate it, but he is only allowed to activate it
-during the first lap of the race
-during SC
-when he is waved blue flags
-going into the pits

When the driver activates full rear view, it is indicated by a green light at the back of the car.


When I do karting, I do not see them until it is too late for me to block. Same in MotoGP. It would not making passing easy, because you still need to catch someone, but it makes it more difficult to block.

What's the Indy car rule, something to moving in the braking zone?

no, clearly not THAT rule.
you might as well wave the other cars

That's effectively what you'd have without mirrors. Guys staying on the racing line, and then suddenly getting passed.

No.

Title needs to be changed to 'Increase Crashes- - the ultimate solution'.

They just gotta tighten up the blocking rule.

Not to the extremes of USA racing, but just tighter then it is. It's too lopsided towards the car infront. It's like soccer/futbol/football where people are happy to watch 0-0 draws because "when someone scores it means they earned it".

The same thing is in basketball with charge/blocking rule. There is always a good balance to try and find in the middle.

You want both sides to have a fair chance. You don't want it lopsided in either direction.

Where it gets worse for F1, is that they keep trying to change all these other parts of the car etc to try and help. Then they punish people for trying to overtake, and don't punish Lewis for weaving in Sepang. They punished Schumacher in Monaco for overtaking. Everyone watching live thought that the reason they released the SC with one lap to go was to have a final dash. Then they want to make artificial overtakes with things like KERS, where it's over before the braking zone. Virtually no skill at all required for that.

Just tighten up the blocking rule so that they can't block one way, then dart back onto the racing line. If they go inside, that means they have COMMITTED to the inside line and the car behind can go outside line, if he gets close enough. A good blocker in F1 is virtually impossible to overtake in F1. Which is fine.. except he already has a HUGE advantage in that the car behind can't follow him through fast corners. Not to mention some tracks have no passing opportunities like Monaco. Allowing heavy blocking on a track like Monaco is pretty silly.

It's too lopsided to the car infront. You know you really screwed up and had a bad day when you got overtaken in the dry in F1.

Er, you can't see anything out of the mirrors at the moment as it is. Ditching them wouldn't make any difference.

I really enjoy a good block. The cars and the aero are more problematic too than blocking. More stupid blocking rules don't help either because it could be the difference between an easy pass with 20 laps to go = no excitement or 20 last laps epic battle.

Besides, overtaking is overrated. Racing is about the fastest driver+car getting to the finish first, not about being an overtaking festival.

Problem as I see it is that they are making a lot of silly (IMO) other changes:
- Movable front wing, but you are not free to use it as you wish.
- Movable rear wing (coming up), but you are not free to use it as you wish.
- KERS, but you are not free to use it as you wish.

So in order to make it possible to pass they come up with three different push to pass buttons. It sucks. IMO of course.

We are heading for times when driving is secondary. Pressing the right buttons at the right time is primary.

While basically I don't like the idea, I've also came up with "ultimate solution" Example below:


http://grandprixinsider.wordpress.com/

Yeah, I think a 2010 F1 car could overtake that.

As I said few times already.

2-3 simetrical 100-200m sections (left/right option for a driver) on the track.

I don't know that it would make a difference. Even if you're a second faster than a guy over a lap, that's only like .1 seconds per corner. So how much are you really going to close over a 100m section?

I don't know either. But I would give it a chance to see it in action

Rebuild the tracks? If the tracks was the problem, yes, but they aren't.

The tracks are part of the problem actually. The cars are too fast for them now, there's barely any brake zones.

so make breaking zones longer - use steel brakes

also use old skool manual gear boxes.

are we talking about formula vintage or the pinnacle of technology?