UcanUwill wrote:Just started to watch Belgian GP, I am few hours behind... But man, safety procedures ruined F1, the most exiting thing in F1 used to be rain, now they do not allow them to race at all during rain. I get that safety is important, but they used to race during rain all the time in the past and everyone were fine, I imagine these current racers probably wouldn't be fine because at this point, apart from grandpa Alonso, none of these pilots ever raced during this condition and wouldn't know what to do.
I was so exited to learm that it might rain during race, and now I see black flag, very disappointing.
Yeah, I watched Belgian GP yesterday as well. Was excited for the prospect of rain but these cars kick up so much spray with the ground effect of the floor, etc, no one can see behind... I know it's a bit insane to send drivers out on the track to do flat out racing while objectively blinded by water, but that's basically what everyone wants to see as entertainment. We could've had a legendary GP this weekend, instead, it was just cars circulating on a legendary track.
I do agree with your sentiment though, safety is affecting the product, let me open that up a bit because it's not all safety... their regulations are adversely affecting the product. This series of regs are all about generating aerodynamic advantage, in doing so they've basically messed up two parts of the "racing" aspect; inclement weather racing- due to spray generated- and passing/following in corners -due to 'dirty air-/turbulence'. In rainy or wet conditions you can actually see the way that air pushes out and behind the cars, it's amazing how significant it really is. Thankfully there have been a handful of rainy races in these regulations where somehow they have managed to race in the water.
But these rules are out after this season, and next year's change may reduce this turbulence from the back of the car but I'm not holding my breath on that at all.
They have cars with the upmost safety specs on them, and the halo, and a whole complement of incredible developments, even a bunch of unused wet-tyres sitting in the pit lanes while it is heavily raining under red-flags, which defeats the purpose of having wet tyres at all. If these cars' safety components are so good, and the track has FIA-grade 1 safety standards, which they all do, then start the damn race on time.
If we're just going to race in the dry, then mandate it. If we are going to race in all conditions, FIA, please, figure this out.