Team radio ban to cut driver assistance

F1 Fanatic Round-up

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In the round-up: Some types of team radio messages could be banned to prevent drivers being given help with their driving styles during races.

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F1 set for team radio clampdown (Autosport)

“Although there is little desire for a total ban on team radio, it is understood that efforts will be made to outlaw specific communications from the pits that help drivers with their performance.”

‘No three-car teams next year’ (Sky)

Eric Boullier: “I don’t think we’ll go to eight teams and three cars per team next year and definitely not in such a short-term notice. I think everybody is aware of this and I think F1 is aware of that as well.”

Lotus emphasis now on 2015 (F1)

“Q: You are serving as interim team principal – will your permanent replacement in that role be a real racer again?
Gerard Lopez: The answer is yes. We are in the process of looking at that. That should be decided sooner rather than later to be fully integrated in 2015.”

Ferrari and McLaren have a hard road ahead (Reuters)

Ron Dennis: “Don’t expect it (success) today, maybe not even during the course of this year but I can absolutely and categorically assure you we are back.”

The future is bright but uncertain for crop of British racers (The Times, subscription required)

“The tiddler teams, who could help [GP2 championship leader Jolyon] Palmer become a serious F1 driver, need $10 million to $15 million (roughly £6.2 million to £9.3 million) from a driver to guarantee a seat – and there are plenty of foreign drivers out there with budgets provided by the governments and industrial sponsors.”

Bob Bell linked to future Ferrari role (Adam Cooper’s F1 Team)

“The name of former Mercedes technical director Bob Bell has again cropped up in connection with a future role at Ferrari as Marco Mattiacci continues his restructuring programme.”

Tweets

Comment of the day

DaveW says Luca di Montezemolo’s problems at Ferrari are as much to do with his strategy for the road car business as the F1 team’s performance:

I think FIAT’s board doesn’t necessarily share this view of Ferrari’s business. Yes, Montezemolo has turned Ferrari into one of the world’s most valuable luxury brands, in part, through limiting production.

But FIAT is in business to make money, and you don’t grow the brand enough by licensing sports shoes and amusement parks. You make it by moving more product at a high margin. Iim sure that FIAT’s board has seen what Wolkswagen has done with Lamborghini, and what Porsche has done, and have a mighty hankering for the top-line numbers of those firms. Porsche, over the howls of purists, massively expanded sales and revenues by building the Cayenne, and is about to start stacking mountains of paper with the Macan. Lamborghini is about start its own SUVs. VW is even taking Bentley into a volume direction with an SUV coming there too.

Montezemolo’’s philosophy is not in line with basic reality for a subsidiary of a major corporation–you have to continually increase profits, shares, and revenues. The purists will howl, but Montezemolo will be gone, and Ferrari soon enough will be building SUVs in a couple sizes and a probably a volume turbo GT below the California. Perhaps even a proper full-size saloon a la the Ghibli or Quattroporte.
DaveW (@Dmw)

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On this day in F1

The leaking of a statement made by Nelson Piquet Jnr to the FIA five years ago today fuelled the controversy surrounding the Renault team’s victory in the previous year’s Singapore Grand Prix.

And 25 years ago today Alain Prost inherited victory in the Italian Grand Prix when his McLaren team mate Ayrton Senna retired with a blown engine.

Prost, who had already announced his impending move to Ferrari, delivered a calculated blow to team principal Ron Dennis by giving the trophy to the fans. With four races remaining he headed Senna by 20 points in the championship.

Image © Red Bull/Getty

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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81 comments on “Team radio ban to cut driver assistance”

  1. Nice job FIA, cut team radio and cut an integral part of what Formula 1 is as a team sport.
    Next cut the mechanics changing tyres and fixing the car, let it all be about the driver.

    1. Maybe get rid of the cars too!

      Next F1 world champion Mo Farah?

    2. Maybe if the cars weren’t as technically complicated, they could do without so many radio messages (i.e. ERS/DRS)

    3. They should make a rule to prevent more rules to follow…

  2. Really? Team radio is being touted as the reason for decrease in F1s popularity? I didn’t know F1s popularity was in decline but even if it is, there are many reasons that would come to mind before blaming team radio. How about DRS rendering the art of defensive driving useless, quieter engines, one team dominating, over the top ticket prices, double points and having to pay over £500 a year to watch a full season of f1? The people in charge keep trying to fix things that aren’t broken and ignoring the things that are broken. Maybe THAT is the reason for F1s decline in popularity.

    1. Yes (@come-on-kubica)
      10th September 2014, 0:46

      F1 is in such a mess outside the racing atm, they really need a fresh approach and some of these dinosaurs moved on.

    2. in the rest of the world, watching f1 on tv is quite cheap, i’m paying less than 8 euros a month to cable suscription. Argentina and Brazil is the same on that. and i assume that’s true to china probably. So: were’s the bigger market? in the EU or in the BRIC countrys? who cares how much someone from the uk pays to watch f1 on tv? that’s irrelevant to Unilever (for instance) wich sponsors Lotus. They get a massive exposure in their bigger markets. and that’s what’s moving F1 away frome Europe

    3. Alonso will still be a better driver than Chilton without team radio! Please spare me of this “driver skills talk”. Team radio results from the natural evolution of the sport just like tv-aided decisions in basketball and other sports.

    4. @aimalkhan On paying for watching F1, I think it’s new to many people in UK but pretty much the whole world pays to watch F1 and other major leagues including EPL, Spanish La Liga, Bundesliga, Champions League, NBA, NFL and so on. I reckon that many European football leagues are doing fine in terms of audience despite not being free-to-air. I don’t think it’s as big a deal as some make it look like. If they fix other factors and make racing more exciting, competitive and less gimmicky people will pay for it (P.S.: I pay over 500 pounds per year).

      1. On paying for watching F1, I think it’s new to many people in UK

        I don’t think it is necessarily the fact we have to pay (although a change to pay TV from the excellent free to air BBC coverage was a kick in the teeth), it has more to do with how many people pay for TV anyway, and how much it costs.

        In many other countries, many people already pay for a TV subscription. In the UK, the number is growing, but most of the people I know still just watch free-to-air TV. So in order to get F1, those people would have to start from scratch, and it is a huge jump to go from FTA to Sky (or any of the other providers)

        I was, and still am, lucky. We already had a basic Sky subscription, and just pay an extra £5/month which gets us HD channels and the F1 channel. I don’t think they offer this any more, so the only option for most who currently have Sky is going to be a Sports subscription, which costs an extra £25/month (on top of over £20/mo for the basic subscription).

        While many football fans don’t find this excessive, they get games all year, and several every weekend. Most football fans also watch other sports, which are also included.

        Many F1 fans, on the other hand, don’t watch other sports. This means that, assuming you don’t have a subscription TV service at the moment, you are paying over £500 for 19 races (or race weekends), or £29 per race. This is excessive.

        So I believe the main problems with F1 on Pay TV are cultural. We don’t have a culture of paying for TV in this country, and those who don’t are very resistant to change. Even for those who do pay already, the charges are incredibly high for an F1-only fan with no interest in all the other sports which come in the bundle, especially when worked out per event (in comparison with, say, football or rugby fans).

  3. They’re banning team radio?! Oh no who’s going to tell Massa how to drive now?

    1. +++111…hahahahahaha

    2. And probably Rosberg and Hamilton too :)

    3. Isn’t it the Merc drivers who get the most help?

      1. @viscountviktor they have more airtime, probably everybody gets the same amout of help.

        To be fair, those cars are very complicated machines so if they ban team radio, teams will install bigger “tableau de bord” so drivers can get the info anyway…

  4. Whilst I agree that team’s telling the drivers how to drive must be addressed I don’t think that banning team radio is the solution. At the end of the day this is a team sport and we should not confuse strategy changes with advice on driving style. I think with the complexity of current cars it shouldn’t be a memory test for the drivers to remember resets for example. The team should be allowed to respond to questions about the car. For me, live telemetry should be banned and the driver has to express what he feels and a solution worked from there. Banning team radio would remove a little entertainment from race broadcasts and strategic elements would be removed to the point where a driver could win a race by seeing another driver pit on the TV! That to me is a bit backward and this really shouldn’t be an all-or-nothing issue.

    1. I didn’t read this as being an all or nothing proposition. Radio communications can be pretty entertaining and enlightening, but I wouldn’t mind if driver coaching was banned. That might be a bit hard to define and regulate though.

    2. I agree about the telemetry, just make it so they cant transmit from the car. No doubt the engineers would complain about safety but stuff them, they’ll just have to use higher tolerances.

      1. You’re right, telemetry should also be more controlled, but not banned!
        Imagine if the battery is overheating and reaching critical levels, the driver would be driving oblivious he has a ticking bomb on his back.

        Basic telemetry should stay but maybe driver inputs on the pedals and steering, tyre temperatures, suspension loads, all those things can go and give a sensitive driver a much bigger advantage than his rivals, like in the old days.

        1. You don’t need car to pit telemetry for that, just a basic set of warning lights in the cockpit.

    3. @rbalonso You just read the headline didn’t you? and not vey well it seems.

      Messages like: “you’re loosing 2 tenths on S2, avoid pedal crossover, take a tighter line trough corner X” wouldn’t be allowed anymore because they help the driver go faster. The rest would remain the same: “you are running out of fuel, keep the pace up for 3 more laps, safety car out pit this lap”

      I guess FIA would need FOM’s assistance to make sure this rule is properly enforced, but I see no reason why they couldn’t implement it and I’m sure most drivers will be happy with it as long as it’s the same for everyone.

      1. Im all for it. And considering the rule is already there, its just a matter of enforcing it.

    4. I hope they get rid of the fuel saving beeps..

      I’d probably be able to drive an F1 car if they told me where to break on each bend!!

      1. I was horrified to hear the fuel saving beeps, so the driver was being told when to change gear, and save fuel…no skill in that one then….and would like to see the end of launch control….lets see who are the best drivers…….

  5. Rather than trying to come up with a way to deal with F1’s general image, they’re once again treating a symptom of the decrease of popularity, rather than the ‘sickness’.

    But hey, what do we know? We’re the ones who keep watching a sport that’s great on weekends, but poisonous every other day of the week.

    1. Dont worry! We are slowly going back to the 70s when everything was classic, golden and sparkly!

  6. The 1999 Williams livery is one of my favourite liveries of all time!

    1. Really? I’ve always seen Williams in a shade of blue…the Red never sat well with me.

      1. Yes, I think it was just a necessity to run it in red..

  7. To the video of Senna: well we can see that the Italian fans cheered a lot for a Ferrari rival’s retirement even back then so I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that there’s a bit of booing for a non-Ferrari driver who’s also slightly unpopular right now.

    1. It was more about Prost winning than Senna retiring. Prost was heading to Ferrari. Very similar to the year before when Senna got into JLS letting Berger in the Ferrari take the win.

  8. I won’t miss the radio chatter at all. I think it has crossed the line into hand-holding; complicated car systems notwithstanding. I think changes are going to be very, very hard to implement though.

  9. The so-called “clamp down” on team radio communications will be as effective as the ban on team orders and it just means we will be hearing more cryptic messages like “multi 21”. I wouldn’t be surprised if the top teams aren’t already working on code-books!

  10. I’d not mind banning radio communication at all ! Honestly, they are being told how to drive while doing it… but I get the feeling that we’re just saying this because they are broadcasted now.

    I cannot imagine anything else happening in the late 90’s. And we never thought of this issue back then.

    Still. I’d try… but in the same way that I’d try to run a race without a single DRS zone, for instance…

  11. High time to curtail some of the radio. Let the drivers feel the **** out for themselves a little already.

  12. I think a good way to reduce these kinds of team radio messages would be to enforce a numerical limit (say, 5) on the number of messages from the engineer to the driver. Note that this limit would apply only in one direction; drivers could freely speak to their team as much as they like.

    The restriction would not apply:

    – before the race start
    – under double-waved yellows / red flag / safety car
    – on the slowing-down lap
    – for any driver not on the lead lap
    – in any other instance where there is an immediate and compelling safety risk

    Under this system, teams would be forced to reduce the how-to-drive style messages and instead ration out their calls to provide only definitive information (tyre wear, fuel usage, rival position, etc)

    1. @prateek727 I like this idea but I feel it should be a time limit e.g. 1 minute per race.

  13. Beeing a long time McLaren fan, and now well aware that McLaren use to take away drivers’ trophies, I do really sympathize with Prost…

  14. Yeah, team orders were banned too.

  15. I am very much pro banning the Radio but only if it’ll be banned completely. No information on tires, no stupid codes and settings. The only exception would be if there is some real danger.
    I know though that it’s wishful thinking unless the cars get simpler. Just by looking at the number of switches on the steering wheel is getting me dizzy.
    If they won’t ban the radio completely teams will find a way to get the right message in.
    I don’t mind though if they at least do some steps to limit “robot like” messages to the drivers that tells them how to be a racing driver… :)

  16. Radio restrictions are an absolutely insane idea. If they’re not going to let them tell them how to drive then you might as well stop giving drivers telemetry read printouts too. Its the same thing that happens when the driver goes back to the garage and looks at his data but it happens during the race.

    The fans don’t like it when drivers are told how to improve their lap times. Instead of telling FOM not to broadcast these messages lets just make an incredibly vague and complex rule that puts restrictions on what teams can tell their drivers. Lets also ignore the fact that anyone and everyone would like to be told how to drive a car faster around a track since it is in the mutual interest of the team and the driver to place higher and go faster.

    Like other people have said this will just lead to more Multi 21 messages.

    I don’t know why F1 can’t just stick to simple solutions?

  17. I really don’t care if the teams communicate with the drivers or not. I don’t care if they tell the drivers how to drive or what settings to use. I just don’t want to here it. I wish there were different options for viewers that had different tastes. It would be nice when Croft starts having an orgasm to just switch to the option that only has the sound of the cars and the crowd. Isn’t this technically feasible nowadays?

    1. @darryn If you’re watching Sky, then there are surely plenty of other options via their interactive services.

    2. @darryn Or just turn the volume down & listen to Radio 5 Live at the same time!

      1. That’s a good idea.

  18. I don`t think reducing radio will do much to “improve the show”
    What I strongly believe, is that Telemetry should be limited. It should still be available to the teams, but with certain limitations. They shouldn’t be able to tell how much a car is sliding and lots of other over the top info.
    The FIA should determine which sensors are allowed to be read by the team in the garage.

    Or, another crazy idea to spice things up.
    Completely stop car-to-pit data transfer, and only allow data to be transferred during the pit stop – like a massive download of data. (except for data regarding safety)
    That would be more road relevant, would probably force a few extra pit stops, ensure drivers were managing their own race AND telemetry technology would still be used.

  19. Team radio message (like many other pseudo measures).
    The FIA (or whoever) tries again to be ‘half pregnant’. Either you allow it free for all, or you ban it 100%. That is easier to police and clearer to the fans.

    I do not think radio messages is such a big turn-off to us. It actually helps the fans with some insights and entertainment – thanks KR.

  20. I hate the team radio and I hate hearing the team radio. Glad they’re considering reducing it.

    1. @ajokay I can’t understand this at all. We learn so much about the drivers, the races and the sport through what is communicated on the radios. Often it’s the only time we hear what the drivers really think and feel (or close to it) which isn’t passed through the PR filter. I understand why people don’t like hearing racing drivers being told how to be racing drivers, but the team radio gives us so much more than that.

      1. @keithcollantine
        I’m with @ajokay on this one, when they first started broadcasting team radio it was a good feature that I liked but it’s gone too far now and I’d be happy to see it reduced or put on a seperate feed from the world feed.
        Hearing drivers complaining about other drivers to their teams in the hope that Charlie will listen and take action is something I find as annoying as seeing football players waving imaginary cards to the referee in an attempt to get them booked.
        The now customary messages between the team and driver when they win sound anything but “real”, and they’re now just bland PR messages I’d be glad to do away with.
        Hearing teams tell drivers how to drive takes away a lot of the mystique and, for me, makes it look like any half decent racer could do what the top drivers do. This may have been happening since radios were first fitted to F1 cars but hearing it adds very little to my viewing pleasure.
        I also think that FOM’s selective broadcast policy can have a huge effect on how drivers are percieved, it’s very easy to make a driver sound like he’s always complaining or always asking for telemetry info on his team mate by only broadcasting a selection of his radio messages each race and without hearing every other message he makes it’s impossible to put them into context and come to your own conclussion.
        The lack of radio’s in motorcycle racing is a big plus for me as I feel that once the team leave the grid it is down to the riders to race their own race and as a viewer I can concentrate on what’s happening on the track without thinking the guys in the pits are pulling the strings and doing the riders job for him and as such I’d be happy to see radio (and live car to pit telemetry) banned completely in F1.

        1. put on a seperate feed from the world feed.

          They have, The pits channel which hardly any of the broadcasters bother to actually broadcast.

          http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xpnl6r_2012-f1-malaysian-grand-prix-qualifying-pit-channel-team-radio-feature_auto

      2. @keithcollantine I’ve genuinely never thought it’s added anything to my own personal viewing experience of F1. It was novel when they first started broadcasting the radio messages however long ago it now was (8-10 years?). And when they did, it was few and far between, and it was little more than some basic info on the car, the track, or the drivers ahead or behind.

        But now it seems that once or twice a lap, every lap, we hear an engineer talking some nonsense about something. engine maps, fuel flow, parameters,, or the driver chiming back complaining of no grip, too much grip, broken this, missing that. And the worst of all, the incessant bitching, moaning, crying from the drivers about the other drivers on track. They went slightly too far over a curb, they blocked me a little bit, they’re weaving, they’re not weaving.

        It’s all just too much. For the ‘casual fan’ that F1 is oh so increasingly trying to attract, the minute details about settings and options and coded messages won’t mean squat. I’m sure there are several people, like your good self and others here who are so incredibly involved that they love to hear every minute detail. But for me, evermore limbo’d between casual fan and devoted followed due to the way that F1 is being portrayed and handled by its owners and operators, I genuinely feel it adds nothing to the experience. If anything, it detracts and just sets my teeth on edge and its only little way helps push me away.

        What I fine far more interesting is the fancy graphics that they’ve teased us with over time. The overlays of driver’s different lines through corners, the thermal cameras, the driver’s-eye view from cameras strapped to the helmets. But all of these things appeared for a race or two and have since long disappeared, whereas the wiretapped radios remain.

        Motorsport is man vs machine. And yes, it is a team sport. But once the driver is in the car and those lights go out (thats another thing… they should still turn green), then it should be about him and his car. The team did their bit. They built the car, they refined it, they set it up. Now it’s the driver’s turn. Off you go! We’ll see you in 2 hours! Bring it home safe, bring it home fast, bring it home first. Something goes wrong, bring it into the pits and the team can figure out what is wrong then.

    2. @ajokay @beneboy While I totally understand why not everyone likes team radio, I agree with @KeithCollantine here.

      I also do not really want to hear engineers tell drivers on the radio where to start braking and what buttons to push but there is so much good about those conversations between drivers and their teams.

      Complaining is simply an inevitable part of the drivers’ jobs. I believe they complain all the time, in tests, in post-race debriefs, in e-mails because they always strive for more and are only satisfied when they have a dominant car (and the team mate is not as quick in it). Complaining is their real life and we should be happy to hear a small part of it on the team radio. For sure, sometimes they get carried away like Vettel and Alonso did at Silverstone but that is no reason to switch off the radio completely.

      I personally have had a lot of fun with the team radio transcripts articles on F1 Fanatic. A lot of the quotes are epic and I am not talking only about the likes of “Fernando is faster than you” here. Team radio clearly adds to the excitement.

      While I basically agree with the FIA that teams should not tell the drivers how to drive, a total ban of team radio would be an example of throwing out the baby with the bath water.

    3. @ajokay Couldn’t agree more. Of course, team radio gives us a good insight into the drivers’ psyche during the races itself, but it just makes Formula 1 feel very one-dimensional. One of the things I really like about Formula 1 is the idea that a driver is one with his car: if there is a problem, he is the one that has to fix it. In the current formula, it feels like the drivers are not in control of their car at all, and team radio makes the drivers look unintelligent and unaware.

      Driving the car will become more challenging for the drivers because they will need to manage their car as well as driver as fast as possible. I don’t think team radio can be banned in the short term, because the systems onboard F1 cars are too complex to be managed by one driver at the moment. Also, I think communication between the race director and the drivers should still be allowed, for safety reasons.

  21. No doubt one team will work around the wording of the Team Radio ruling by installing Google Glass into their drivers helmets.

  22. I get the feeling the people are trying to make F1 more popular are just complete idiots, team radio is always interesting to listen to when its played on TV as it lets you see how the race is going for that driver.

    I also think the ways to make it more popular would be to give it all back to the BBC so everybody can watch it and people who have never seen it before can stumble across it, make the ticket prices cheaper as all you are really doing is sitting on some grass, and finally they should live stream all the video feeds from the cars online.

  23. Michael Brown (@)
    10th September 2014, 9:37

    Does the FIA have to keep making poor decisions for F1? I mean really.

  24. So, Maldonado was hired on talent alone at Williams, not a pay driver in any way, and there will definitely be 3-car teams next year. What will come out next time Adam Parr opens his mouth? And who cares what he says any more?

    You can’t half-ban team radio. Who decides when a message is too much coaching? And what’s the penalty for that?

    I think broadcasting of team radio could be improved; Indycar and WEC do it better, with announcements from the Race Director, more timely and less selective drivers’ conversations and none of those awkward interruptions and pauses in commentary before some meaningless instruction to change settings, that’s often in the wrong language anyway.

  25. Instead, just ban commentaries all together air all radio comms.

  26. Michael Brown (@)
    10th September 2014, 11:42

    Maybe if the formula wasn’t about tire and fuel conservation, we wouldn’t have a lot of these radio messages.

  27. The people that run this sport are in desperate need of replacement.

    To the the casual fan I can imagine team radio is a big part of the entertainment, especially when drivers are moaning. How the hell are they going to enforce this rule? “Right Lewis, you have a stop-go penalty because we told you Nico was faster on that last lap.”

  28. This is odd. A few People moan about the team radio for 2 weeks and they restrict it. Everyone hates double points, standing starts etc but they keep them. They have no clue. If they go ahead with this idea of using twitter to give a driver more boost, sad to say after 30 years, i’m done with F1.

  29. I HATE the idea of restricting team radio as its one of the best features of the TV broadcast & one of the things I love been able to listen to as it.
    I also hate the idea of any ban on car to pit telemetry as again been able to see that telemetry data on the TV broadcasts is something I love seeing.

    I also don’t get the complaints about drivers been told how to improve there lap times, Or how to better manage the tyres/fuel etc…. Its a team sport & this sort of thing has been going on since team radio was 1st introduced & its the same sort of thing that goes on in every category.
    By banning that, Team radio or telemetry your just knocking F1 a few steps down when compared to other categories.

    Regardless of what info there getting from the teams its still down to the drivers to drive the cars, They can be told to brake later into a corner but its still upto them to actually brake later & make it work for laptime rather than lock-up & go off.
    This radio clampdown could have a massive negative effect on things with drivers pushing less as there unaware of what the tyres are doing (The Pirelli’s are difficult to get a feel for remember) or unaware of how much fuel they will have at the end resulting in them running out (As we saw in the 80s).
    Not to mention that a driver been told where to find time could actually improve the racing by helping him catch a car ahead & produce a battle.

  30. I’m against this measure. Simply because there’s no valid / logic reason. Radio messages are a natural result of F1 evolution. Drivers evolved too, learning how to use team radio messages in their profit, thus increasing competition. Now, without a single sign against the merits of this system, FIA is about to ban radio messages. Doesn’t make sense at all. Driving is not only taking the wheel. Its everything else attached. In this new era of F1 there’s radio messages between the team and drivers, so that’s part of driving too. I think that even in kart race there are radio messages…

    1. Traction control, active suspension, automtic gears, moveable aerodynamic devices and fan cars were all a result of natural F1 evolution and they were all banned.
      If F1 had been allowed to evolve without the interfence of the FIA we’d now be watching driverless or remote control cars with six or more wheels, skirts and fans, active wings, traction control and a whole load more things too.

  31. F1 Strategy Group should see a doctor with all their “knee jerking” going on.

    How about FOM not air these disturbing messages if they are such a problem for fans?

    Besides, I’m sure they will just put most of the “offending” data on the steering wheel instead anyway. Rosberg already srt of did so in Monza by pressing a button about how he felt about the tyres instead of saying it.

  32. Very humbly speaking, I said that last year. No communication at all! When I race a sprint race or a 24hrs, we have no radios. We have to read the pitwall boards and if we miss it, we pay the consequences. Could be a tyre change order or a driver change or simply a lap time or a gap to some other driver. Let the drivers think while driving, not just being remote controlled!

  33. The thing for me is that F1 is a team sport, Yes the drivers are the one’s out there driving the cars but if the team can see from telemetry or the timing data that a driver is losing time in a specific sector/corner then for the benefit of the team why should they not be allowed to tell a driver where he’s losing time. If by doing that it allows a driver to find that time & be more competitive which gives us a better race then why is it seen as such a negative?

    The drivers are still the one’s driving the cars, Even when told where there losing time the drivers are still the one’s who have to go out there & put the data into practice by braking later, carrying more speed & getting on the throttle sooner. By been told he needs to brake later into turn 1 or whatever Max Chilton is not suddenly on the same level as Hamilton, Its still down to driver skill to figure out how to improve where there told they need to.

    It happens in other categories so why should it suddenly be banned in F1 just because everyone within F1 want to ignore the real reasons why many fans have turned off or been unable to afford to tune in to begin with.

    1. There’s also nothing stopping teams from just relaying messages via the pit board.

  34. The team radio ban is an interesting one, because we don’t actually know how much of the sort of thing that people are getting upset about actually happens.

    We already know that FOM are selective with what radio actually gets broadcast. Imagine if FOM had chosen not to broadcast Alonso and Vettel’s moaning – then we’d be none the wiser, and we might not even be having this discussion now. And how many times have drivers’ radio messages been broadcast devoid of their context, completely misrepresenting what’s actually going on?

    To me, a key part of Formula 1 is extracting the maximum performance you can, from whatever tools you have. The sort of real-time analysis and feedback of car/driver performance that we’re hearing snippets of is a natural part of that, I feel. Not to mention the ease that such rules could be worked around (just see the team-orders saga for plentiful examples!)

    I think the real issue is in FOM’s editorial decisions, rather than the actual radio broadcasts.

  35. @Dmw – So the day of the premium car company is over? Hardly. Aston Martin aborted their Cygnet project, Lamborghini never bothered with the Estoque saloon and has announced they will not make the Urus SUV, and Bentley has done nothing with their EXP 9 F SUV concept since debuting at the 2012 Geneva motor show.

  36. The idea to cut down team radio is a very bad one, and could be a massive issue.

    From a fan’s point of view, I think that hearing the driver ask for every last detail of where they can improve really shows just how hard these drivers push to the limit, trying to extract every last thousandth out of a car, and this is a small part of what makes F1 so special. Also, if it is not done properly, it will end up just like the team orders ban – no way of policing it, and a complete mess, and I’m sure that teams will easily find a way of coding a lot of messages anyway.

    The article says:

    The FIA could make it clear that any communication from the pits that helps the drivers with their performance – rather than being for procedural or safety reasons – is a breach of the rules.

    I really cannot see this working and is nowhere near specific enough (and I doubt the regulation will be). An example could be because some of the procedural reasons are to affect (either enhance or limit) the performance at different stages in the race. Pretty much every type of radio message would need writing into the regulations in order to define it clearly. The team radio is there to be used by teams and drivers, and data can still be given on pit-boards anyway.

    Would we see drive-through penalties for too much radio information, or will teams receive fines (with the advantage still gained) or how would it work?

    Even the idea to give fans less radio information is not a very good one as ultimately it just distances fans from what goes on even more.

    To me this seems like another stupid idea to “improve the show”.

    1. Just like to add in (after my 3rd paragraph):
      Teams have all this data and telemetry, and what is the point if they cannot even use it for anything useful. They have top expert engineers in the back of the garages trying to work everything out which will be partially useless if they cannot use the data.

  37. First sensible idea in my opinion. MotoGP doesn’t have it, NASCAR as well, and so do many other sports. Yes have the telemetry Friday to Saturday, but come Sunday let the drivers control everything. It will certainly bring back some drivers critical thinking and skill. Just have a button for when coming into the pit and also if there is something really critical wrong (for example front wing damage that cannot be easily seen).

  38. To ban the radio in the current climate with fuel management and extreme tyre saving is stupid, wins would be more of a lottery and not a true picture.

    Scrap the compulsory stop and get rid of the poor tyres then by all means ban it and let the driving do the talking.

  39. Telemetry – data from the car to the pits isn’t a prolem, neither, in principle, is info from the pits to the driver or even the car. What has to stopped is control of the car from the pits. A little bit of ‘Push for 2 laps then box’ is OK as might be Info such as ‘you need to save fuel’, and would seem to be allowed by the rule. What the rule seems to make illegal is the ‘brake later into T2’ and ‘select mode x5’. The grey area might be the ‘you are losing time at T2’ info but at least that isn’t telling the driver how to do it. Leave the driving to the driver.

  40. Since the non-broadcast radio messages include beeps for the driver to shift/brake to, those should be gone first. We are seeing a group of “drivers” who couldn’t navigate the track without a beep when to shift, being told the gap to the car in front, etc etc. If you can’t see the car in front and the pitboard doesn’t say you are in 1st, you are going too slow. If your car doesn’t do what you need it to do, then tell your engineers after practice and have them adjust it. With so much pit to driver aid, they might as well remote control the car from the pit wall. The drivers don’t have the talent to drive unaided anymore…

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