Daniel Ricciardo, McLaren, Baku City Circuit, 2021

F1 made right call with delayed changes to pit stop rules – Seidl

RaceFans Round-up

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In the round-up: McLaren team principal Andreas Seidl backed the delayed introduction of changes to Formula 1’s pit stop rules.

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In brief

Seidl welcomes delay to pit stop rules change

Report: Minimum reaction times dropped from FIA clampdown on pit stops
As RaceFans revealed last month, the FIA notified teams via a technical directive it intended to introduce new rules ahead of the upcoming Hungarian Grand Prix forcing them to slow down their pit stops. Some teams have consistently performed tyre changes in less than two seconds, but concerns arose over whether these were being done safely.

However as revealed last week, the changes are to be watered down. A revised version of the technical directive issued to teams indicated the plan to specify minimum reaction times at certain stages of the wheel change process had been abandoned. The introduction of the new rules will also be delayed until after the summer break, a move Seidl welcomed.

“It was a good, constructive discussion between teams and the FIA,” he said. “And in the end, due to the special situation that we are in also with Covid – that it is not so easy to go back to the factories at the moment and train together with the crew all the changes that were in the TD initially – I think it made sense in the end to delay it and use the longer break and give every team more time to be prepared for the change.”

Jaguar commits to Formula E

Jaguar will keep racing in Formula E
Jaguar has become the latest manufacturer to confirm it will continue to compete in Formula E following the introduction of its new, third-generation cars which will arrive next year. Jaguar Land Rover CEO Thierry Bollore said the championship “is already proving to be the perfect environment to design, collaborate, test and develop new sustainable technologies at pace.”

Ahead of this weekend’s penultimate double-header round in London, Jaguar driver Sam Bird holds a five-point lead in the championship. Jaguar lies third in the teams championship, five points behind Virgin.

Wolff: Part-indoor track will be challenging for Formula E title bid

Venturi team principal Susie Wolff had to endure a frustrating weekend in New York, after the team had emerged triumphant in Puebla to take two podiums and the drivers’ title lead for Edoardo Mortara. The team scored just six points in Brooklyn, all for Norman Nato, as Mortara fell to fourth in the standings.

Going in to the London Eprix, Wolff said the novel track layout, around and through the gigantic hangars of the ExCel Centre, might throw up opportunities for the underdog Monegasque team. “As the penultimate race weekend of the season, the London E-Prix is of crucial importance – scoring well at the ExCeL will be essential to set up August’s finale in Berlin.

“London is going to be very challenging for the drivers, not only due to the varying surface grip levels inside the venue versus outside, but also the height variations of the track especially the down hill section at the start – which I’m sure will make it very interesting for the fans to watch.

“As with any new circuit, completing consistent running throughout practice will be important to establish a performance baseline and hopefully, we can be in the mix and threaten for big points.”

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Comment of the day

It’s clear how Fernando Alonso should approach racing following his latest complaint about the standard of stewarding, says @Petebaldwin:

The precedent F1 has set is that if you can weave all over the track and after doing it several times, they’ll give you a warning – after that, your team will radio you and tell you to stop doing it. Their job is to maximise everything out there on track and therefore, it’s only logical for them to weave to break the tow until they are warned.

Same as track limits – you can do it a number of times before you get a warning so when you’re trying to make a gap or just before a pitstop, ignore track limits to gain a few extra tenths
@Petebaldwin

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Author information

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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27 comments on “F1 made right call with delayed changes to pit stop rules – Seidl”

  1. 1st article says alot about modern society and journalism.
    I agree with what is being said, I’m of the same opinion yet why does it have to be this way?
    Why should Horner regret his words, it is this stance that defines modern society. It does not matter that Horner makes a legitimate comment, the truth is irrelevant.
    Lets twist it, like children trying to get the last word, the upper hand.
    What I see is whilst some are taking advantage to “dislike Lewis” others are taking advantage of this behaviour to excuse Lewis.
    “Lets play the card” so that my driver wins.
    the conversation has been taken away from racing.
    Now, it is not about the clash anymore we made this whole thing about Ham supporters and Ham “heytears”,
    In the end of the day society judges that we clearly care more about those who are “disliking” Lewis than those who are trying to exploit the “disliking”.
    Do this people actually like f1?

    1. Dave (@davewillisporter)
      23rd July 2021, 2:44

      @peartree in short, no they don’t! Online trolling is a massive industry. You only need to compare the crowds that attended Silverstone to the online community and you can see the difference. Fans vs fomentors. A few of the latter are on this site too. I do however believe Horner is being completely hyperbolic. When it’s his own driver it’s fair racing and unlucky to get a penalty or unlucky to make contact. Keith or Dieter pointed that out in a previous article.
      I’m none too impressed with Toto either. “I sent you an email” I mean really!!!!!
      The rhetoric of the team bosses needs to get back in it’s box. It’s like they are auditioning for Netflix.
      As for the drivers, that’s what we want. A battle. And we’ve got one!

      1. @davewillisporter

        That is true for Toto as well of course. Why wouldn’t either be allowed to be biased, just like fans have the right to be biased?

    2. Dave (@davewillisporter)
      23rd July 2021, 2:45

      @peartree in short, no they don’t! Online baiting is a massive industry. You only need to compare the crowds that attended Silverstone to the online community and you can see the difference. Fans vs fomentors. A few of the latter are on this site too. I do however believe Horner is being completely hyperbolic. When it’s his own driver it’s fair racing and unlucky to get a penalty or unlucky to make contact. Keith or Dieter pointed that out in a previous article.
      I’m none too impressed with Toto either. “I sent you an email” I mean really!!!!!
      The rhetoric of the team bosses needs to get back in it’s box. It’s like they are auditioning for Netflix.
      As for the drivers, that’s what we want. A battle. And we’ve got one!

    3. Erm, where have you been man? Lewis is beyond reproach.

      1. He is not beyond reproach as we see countless times. Or do you mean some can’t ‘reproach’ him in the manner they would wish to without being criticised for it?

  2. In the end of the day society judges that we clearly care more about those who are “disliking” Lewis than those who are trying to exploit the “disliking”.

    That is a very odd conclusion to come to.

    1. RandomMallard (@)
      23rd July 2021, 8:47

      Surely we should care more about the people directing abhorrent racist abuse at the only black driver on the grid as opposed to those who try to offer genuine criticism, however hyperbolic it is. There is a very obvious line between the two.

    2. @skipgamer odd and controversial.
      Like toddlers seeking attention. Whilst we rightfully so condemn the “hey ters”, we feed the attention seekers. Nobody does anything about this.

    3. @skipgamer I’ve no idea how you reach that conclusion either @peartree
      Who’s trying to ‘exploit the dislikes’? You write ‘taking advantage of this behaviour to excuse Lewis’ – but who is using the racist attacks to ‘excuse’ Hamilton’s (legitimate) attempt to pass Verstappen at Copse? That just makes no sense. They’re separate issues. As is Horner’s outburst (the actual topic of the news story in question).

      1. F1osaurus did so on this site…

        1. RandomMallard (@)
          23rd July 2021, 19:43

          @aapje I’ve been in numerous discussions with F1osaurus about the incident since Sunday (and not on their side) and not once have I seen him play the “race card” to excuse Hamilton.

  3. F1 made right call with delayed changes to pit stop rules – Seidl

    No they didn’t the ‘slow teams’ made the most mistakes with unsafe releases (wheels related) while the 2 fastest (Williams and Red Bull has never problems with unsafe releases (wheels related))

    Ok, I hear a RUMOUR that next year Bottas is driving for Alfa Romero …….. So George can beat Lewis in the same car..

    1. Yes, that’s the way F1 works. A new teammate comes in and they are allowed to beat the one already there. Ham did it to Nico, Bottas to Ham. And the young eventually do it to the old. But as Saward put it the other day re Silverstone, sometimes along that journey the lion will need to give one of the troublesome cubs a gentle cuffing.

    2. @macleod

      Indeed. These rules should be postponed indefinitely. It doesn’t seem based on a proper analysis of what is truly dangerous, but to be a political decision to influence the competitiveness of certain teams.

  4. IfImnotverymuchmistaken
    23rd July 2021, 10:05

    If there ever was an instance of let’s fix something that isn’t broken, that would be this pit stop delays (ok, and Sprint race, but that’s not in this article).
    Just because most teams can’t streamline the process as effectively as some, and don’t spend an equal amount of time practicing, the FIA thinks they should negate the effort they’ve invested to “level the playing field”.
    The safety argument is non-existent, as many before have said, RB and Williams have the fastest AND safest pit stops.
    They just did a better job than others, as have Merc on their car for the last 7 seasons, so they felt a bit slower but more deliberate pit stops would be better for them in the long run and didn’t put their team to practicing ultra fast pit stops.
    Now that their “let’s have a meeting to decide how much we’ll tune down the engine so it doesn’t look like we’re TOO fast while still winning easily” time is over, they find themselves wanting in the pit stop efficiency department. Well, tough.

    1. As far as I am aware and in its simplest terms for example would be a wheel connected signal being given before the wheel is actually connected. The revised rules prevent that happening.
      The counter argument here seems to be; yes they are bypassing the safety systems, but as they havent had an accident yet, they should carry on doing it.

      1. IfImnotverymuchmistaken
        23rd July 2021, 10:33

        I wasn’t aware RB or Williams were found bypassing any buttons or regulations during their ultra fast pit stops.

        1. Plenty out there on it, and I think Seidl referred to it in TV interview the other week where he said it was McLaren who sought clarification from the FIA on the matter. Obviously referring to ‘other teams’ rather than pointing the finger at a particular team. And as far as I am aware Mercedes, Ferrari and RB all use the intelligent wheel guns that prevent this happening anyway. Which is why I imagine RB and possibly the others objected to the line in the new rule on minimum reaction times. Personally I think its just a long winded way to get the other teams to use the intelligent guns and then the problem goes away. But that’s only a guess.

        2. They don’t.
          No prove whatsoever for that suggestion.
          But trying to slow your opponent is reason enough for some.

  5. Lord Hain is the kind of people that makes other aware that there is a potentially racism in their comments. I don’t like those kind op people because they will always point out the differences and thus keep racism alive.

    When I was 16 and watching Lewis Hamilton in 2007 I was not aware of his skin color and didn’t make the difference in that. Now in the current society it is pointed out every time that being black is a minority so young people are aware that there is a difference. In this way racism is kept alive like Lord Hain is doing.

    1. @ruben Racism is kept alive by those racially abusing Hamilton on social media and elsewhere. Not by Peter Hain.
      Were Horner’s remarks racist? No. Did they intensify the racial abuse? Who can say. I don’t think they need much excuse. I do think his comments were incendiary and wrong. The fact that a connection is made between his own out of control allegations and online abuse should perhaps concern him. But I doubt it will.

  6. @david-br

    There has actually been quite a bit of scientific study that shows that teaching people that racism is everywhere and that trying to control how people behave, is counterproductive:

    Her team looked at 800 companies over 30 years and evaluated the impact of diversity training. They discovered some surprising – and troubling – findings.

    Firstly, they found that this training normalizes the message that implicit bias is everywhere and so we are all biased.[…] They also found that people react negatively to efforts to control them, and often they perceive diversity training as such.

    https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20180702-why-diversity-training-can-be-more-harmful-than-beneficial

    There is also a study that shows that social liberals become less sympathetic to poor white people, which creates exactly the dynamic we see today, where liberals become increasingly hateful towards the ‘deplorables,’ which results in poor whites feeling increased despair and anger, and voting for populists that do seem to care.
    See https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2019-22926-001

    1. @aapje Perhaps both things are true. I mean, there exists institutionalized and personalized bias (racism) in everyone – prejudices, unfounded generalizations, false assumptions. Those inherited attitudes do need to be challenged and reshaped somehow, though the methods may often be questionable. On the other hand, creating a climate of fear and persecution is also counterproductive, likewise telling or ordering people what to think generally doesn’t work well.

      1. @david-br

        It’s a lot more complex than that, because a lot of the things people complain about are founded generalizations, which means that getting rid of them will also have huge downsides. For example, policing that focuses as much attention on 90-year-olds as on the youth is going to waste a lot of effort, because 90-year olds are immensely less prone to crime.

        But the value of generalizations goes far beyond this, as our interactions are rife with assumptions about the other person. We probably wouldn’t be even able to go outside if we wanted to truly act without acting on generalizations, as we would end up with a lot of impossible to solve dilemma’s. ​For example, being approached by a stranger can trigger a traumatized person, but so can being ignored by others. So not acting on any generalization means
        that we can’t talk to the person, but also have to talk to the person.

        ​Also, the people who complain about the generalizations employed by others against them, seem to almost always employ generalizations that benefit themselves. This is especially true for the ‘anti-racist’ activists, who typically seem to be happy to give you a list of the generalizations they have about various groups.

        Typically, this kind of activism seems to be of the variety: “I can do this, but you can’t,” which doesn’t at all seem just or sustainable.

        PS. Can you explain how all individuals have institutionalized bias? What do you consider an institution in this regard?

  7. Would have been interesting to witness the inevitable failure of those pit stop rules.

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