In the round-up: Daniil Kvyat is looking forward to the return of spectators in time for his home race at Sochi Autodrom next month.
What they say
All six Formula 1 races so far this year have been held behind closed doors, but some fans will be allowed into later events. Kvyat will be able to have some local support at his home race:
It’s great to have some people around. For sure, I guess, all the considerations in organisation have been made for to make it safe for everyone.
So to be honest I think it will be quite interesting to experience that the crowd will be there again in the grandstands because we didn’t have this for quite a long time. So it will be interesting to see that for sure. Quite exciting, of course, and having a home grand prix is always a privilege for every driver.
Quotes: Dieter Rencken
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Social media
Notable posts from Twitter, Instagram and more:
Special Message from Roger Penske: #INDYCAR | #Indy500 pic.twitter.com/DZVOQ8s6qx
— Indianapolis Motor Speedway (@IMS) August 20, 2020
- Find more official F1 accounts to follow in the F1 Twitter Directory
Links
More motor racing links of interest:
Behind Haas' decision to stay in F1 (Racer)
Guenther Steiner: "This separation between the big and small teams financially – that wasn’t done over two or three years; that was done over 20 years. Now to fix it in one go is not possible, but what we have fixed is pretty dramatic if you think about it."
Drugovich’s Guest Column: We had to work on ourselves (F2)
"It will also be quite emotionally for everyone, because of what happened with Anthoine last year. We have to keep that in mind and make sure that it doesn’t go by unnoticed, which it certainly won’t. We will make sure that we are remembering him, all of the time."
F1 Esports Series returns remotely for fourth season with record prize fund (Formula 1 Game)
"For the first time, the two winners of the highly successful inaugural season of the F1 Esports Series China Championship (organised by licensed partner Juss Intellisports), Tang Tianyu and Yuan Yifan, will also be available for team selection after their success in last year’s regional campaign, where they came out on top as the fastest two drivers in the competition."
Joe Saward’s notebook from the Spanish GP (Motorsport Week)
"In the future, there is a strong argument – that you can be quite sure that Formula 1 will be using – that Formula 1 can move more quickly than was previously possible (and reduce costs) by not having all the vast motorhomes of yesteryear and, at the same time, increase revenues by fitting in more races."
Porsche utilising F1-style ops room for GTLM program (Sportscar 365)
"The ops room was first utilized during the Porsche 919 Hybrid LMP1 program, where it’s believed dozens of engineers and staff worked from."
Ella Stevens: The 13-year-old aiming to become Ferrari's first female Formula 1 driver (CNN)
Alice Powell: "She's already won a karting championship and numerous races so she's experienced success. She's also had difficult times and has done well to overcome them. She deserves an opportunity to try and get a place in the Ferrari Academy."
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Comment of the day
The FIA is tightening the power unit rules when it should be loosening them, says @Chimaera2003:
I think it is getting to the point that there needs to be a massive relaxation on the power unit regulations rather than trying to police everything as the FIA are effectively admitting that they are struggling. All that needs to be mandated is the basic power unit architecture.
Surely as along as you properly police the total fuel that is burned (so keep the sensor), how it is burned and how the battery deploys should be down to the teams instead as they can’t magic energy from thin air.
This would deliver more innovation and more speed, downside could be if one team finds something spectacular then it could create a uneven playing field but that that has been true on the aerodynamic side ever since I started watching F1.
I wouldn’t go more extreme and state that any architecture is allowed since I highly doubt that any team will go back to a normally aspirated engine given the efficiency gains (i.e. less fuel needed) for a turbo hybrid.
@Chimaera2003
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On this day in F1
- 15 years ago today Kimi Raikkonen won the first Turkish Grand Prix, though McLaren were denied a one-two after Juan Pablo Montoya was hit by Tiago Monteiro three laps from home. F1 is expected to return to the Istanbul Park circuit later this year.
@HoHum (@hohum)
21st August 2020, 0:38
Attending the Russian GP? Don’t drink the tea !
BasCB (@bascb)
21st August 2020, 9:20
Don’t drink the tea, be aware of casually falling out of open windows in the 4th stock, oh, and while there surely is no Covid-19 anywhere close by, be wary of that strange occurrance of respiratory disease that keeps killing people in the country @hohum.
I guess the crowd will be about as large as it usually is, wonder wether we will get to see Putin again, or is he still hiding away to avoid Covid?
Shimks (@shimks)
21st August 2020, 11:00
@hohum @bascb If you find any discarded perfume in a trash can, just leave it alone.
Shimks (@shimks)
21st August 2020, 11:01
Actually, let me emphasise that I am only making fun of Putin and his cronnies, not Russians in general.
@HoHum (@hohum)
21st August 2020, 13:35
@shimks, No need, all the victims are Russians that are not Putin cronies.
@HoHum (@hohum)
21st August 2020, 0:39
Another COTD I can totally support.
DB-C90 (@dbradock)
21st August 2020, 3:22
COTD +1 and absolutely correct.
Balue (@balue)
21st August 2020, 20:06
-1
How can it possibly be fine with an uneven playing field? And for what? Innovation?
Sensord4notbeingafanboi (@peartree)
22nd August 2020, 9:01
-1 you are very much mistaken cotd. fuel IS the reason why f1 is tightening the engine regs, cotd wants to keep a limit on fuel, which is exactly what is limiting what cotd wants.
if given a choice there would be no hybrids, multiple turbos and back to an engine per race, no innovation.
toiago (@toiago)
21st August 2020, 1:13
Oh my, that McLaren MP4-20… what a beast it was! I still get goosebumps whenever I whatch onboards on youtube.
Aussie Rod (@aussierod)
21st August 2020, 1:24
One of the most beautiful F1 cars of all time. Just gorgeous.
zomtec (@zomtec)
21st August 2020, 8:29
my initial thoughts too
AliceD (@aliced)
21st August 2020, 5:47
Re COD. You cannot give the teams too much free reign, because they will end up creating cars that goes 500 miles per hour and ends up killing many drivers. A lot of the rules are to slow down the cars for safety reasons. It would be amazing if it was possible to build tracks where cars can be safely driven as fast as humanly possible.
AJ (@asleepatthewheel)
21st August 2020, 7:27
@aliced Cotd talks only about engine rules relaxation which won’t push the speeds to such unfathomable limits. And @chimaera2003 is right, mandating a basic architecture with fuel flow monitoring would make the competition much much more close.
“You have 3 engines a year, X kgs of fuel, Y is the maximum fuel flow limit, and Z is the maximum power output. Go do what you want.”
Whatever loophole/cheating trick Ferrari employed for the middle 3rd of last season certainly made it more interesting and watchable.
chimaera2003 (@chimaera2003)
21st August 2020, 9:02
@aliced I did imply removal of the fuel flow limit so what you are relating to is theoretically possible. However my thinking is that if you limit the mass of fuel available to the teams over a race, they will simply optimise the engine for that and the speeds would not be much higher than we have now. What you get in return is nobody complaining about someone else’s PU being illegal.
You could create an engine that could consume 500kg/h and generate way more power than they do at the moment but that is no use if you then run out of fuel after 10 laps and having to carry all the extra weight for a PU to consume that level of fuel. There will be an optimum balance between creating extra power (more speed) and minimising weight increase (less speed) of the complete PU and I suspect we are not too far away from it at the moment.
If speeds do get too fast then simply bring down the fuel mass limit and power will reduce accordingly.
OOliver
21st August 2020, 9:22
The fuel flow limit is like a budget. How you choose to spend it is up to you and based on you’re preferences. But what the FIA is doing is giving you a budget and telling you also you can’t buy luxury items or you must spend the same amount everyday.
The essence of the regulations is to find performance without breaking the rules.
Aapje (@aapje)
21st August 2020, 9:44
They’d still have to limit the oil consumption of the engine.
Jere (@jerejj)
21st August 2020, 13:22
Kvyat’s words are from a Thursday press conference for one of the recent events, so not really news anymore. My view is still the same, though, and it’s that having people in attendance would only work with a very limiter number, which definitely isn’t 30.000. It’d have to be considerably below that figure to work without any risk of something going wrong.
socksolid (@socksolid)
21st August 2020, 15:06
The cotd is somewhat adorable as it seems to assume the engine specs and regulations are decided based on technical factors and some vague less fuel ideas. The engine is all about being a concept that can attract the big engine manufacturers into f1 who are willing to throw billions of euros into it over handful of years. That is all there is to it. A power unit needs to sell road cars or the engine won’t be picked. Lower fuel loads or the tech itself has nothing to do with the selection. It is just a technical problem that can be fixed with oil burning and developing the engine further and further away from a road car engine.
Only things that matter is that the tech chosen can sell more road cars. F1 cars are not hybrid because they consume less fuel. It is because car manufacturers want to sell hybrid cars and the image of environmentally friendly cars to the public because people and governments want cars less fuel consumption. And that is why the car companies need those engines in f1 for their pr campaigns. Back in the 90s a v10 or v12 was the same thing as top level of innovation and the fastest road cars had those engines. Now it is hybrids and soon fully electric.
The teams don’t care at all what kind of engine it is. They might want to politically go after the power unit solution that gives them a competitive advantage but they are not making that decision. The engine manufacturers are. Most of the teams would be happier with cheaper, louder and faster engines but no car manufacturer is willing to spend billions on making those. For that reason f1 will go fully electric as soon as the big car companies don’t want to sell hybrid cars anymore. But in the meantime it is all about money. Why switch to a faster engines made with less money if big car companies are willing to pour billions into the sport? Are they really doing it just to save some fuel?
chimaera2003 (@chimaera2003)
21st August 2020, 19:03
@socksolid I wasn’t thinking as deep as that and certainly no romanticism involved. Just a pragmatic observation that if you have a fixed mass of fuel you had available to complete a race you would use a turbo hybrid as you could extract more power from the PU and just be plain faster, certainly compared to a naturally aspirated V8/V10.
If a fully electric car can deliver the same race distance at the same average speed of an F1 car then so be it. However this is a while off yet.
socksolid (@socksolid)
21st August 2020, 19:54
@chimaera2003 The fuel limit is key part of the engine regulations for these engine regulations. Not some general fia requirement for new possible f1 engines in general. The distance can be changed to fit the engines just like the fuel limits were specifically invented and tailored for these engines. After fia chooses an engine formula they make the engine rules for it. Not the other way around…