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Comment by draklor40 | Hacker News Reader

Mostly because modern F1 is more less about driving and more about optimzing fuel consumption, tyre wear, pitstop strategy and KERS. The driver is merely a pilot doing what is instructed over the radio, unlike the V12 , V10 era where the driver had more autonomy.

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>The driver is merely a pilot doing what is instructed over the radio

I think this severely understates the skill of some of the highest paid athletes on the planet.

Not taking away anything from the drivers. All of them are exceptional and possibly the best on the planet. That said, when you are racing over ~20ish races , as a team, it pretty much boils down to long term strategy and tactics.

Kevin Schwantz and Wayne Rainey were 2 epic motorcyclists in the 90s. Schwantz had more individual wins, but it was Rainey that had more championships titles, because he was more consistent in his races and made fewer mistakes (Even Schwantz admits this in an interview)

This is kind of fascinating to think about from an evolutionary perspective: Does it pay off more to have truly exceptional individuals that can outperform everyone else at times, but may be lost due to risk taking - or - is it better to have people that can perform consistently at a very high level?

Consistency is the true mark of a good racer. I can’t remember who the quote is from but it goes like this: ”Yeah I was a great driver! On a good day I could beat anyone, Senna, Schumi, Prost I was up with the best and beating them. But that’s the thing, on a \good\* day. The real champions, they don’t have good and bad days. They’re always great. At every race, every corner.

They have immense skill. The problem is the competition is nearly equally as skilled.
We've seen this in a lot of different sports over the decades- as the field of play elevates, the variance from athlete to athlete shrinks.

That's why races in the Olympics are timed to the thousandth of a second. It's nuts.

Explain the gulf in performance between the car that Verstappen is driving and Albon.

Not sure this helps your point immensely.
The cars are very similar but obviously not the same in the sense that Verstappens car will be tweaked to his preferences, and Albons to his within the relevant regulations.
So engineering still comes into play.
On top of that Verstappen being the lead driver means that alot of engineering effort is geared towards giving him specifically the car he needs, with his teammate having to adapt within that framework.

It does help my point immensely.
> The cars are very similar but obviously not the same in the sense that Verstappens car will be tweaked to his preferences, and Albons to his within the relevant regulations.
There's the difference. Red Bull have built a car they believe is the fastest they can build. Verstappen is able to extract the most from that. If Albon doesn't "prefer it", then that's his failing, a failing that Verstappen demonstrably does not have.
> On top of that Verstappen being the lead driver means that alot of engineering effort is geared towards giving him specifically the car he needs, with his teammate having to adapt within that framework.
Why is he the lead driver? Because he's a generational talent.

I really wished there was a version of F1 with less mechanical and technical regulation to see what human ingenuity could achieve.

F1 made 1,500 horsepower thirty five years ago. If such an unrestricted series existed today, we'd probably be looking at 3,000+ horsepower, 300-400mph speeds, and either a) autopilot features (for faster-than-human reactions) or b) absolutely ridiculous levels of fatalities.

If it was up to me, I would create a race where the only limits were:
1) Combustion or electric engines only, no jets or rocket boosters 2) Should fit within a box of certain height-width-depth 3) No human drivers, only remote or AI 4) No type of weapons, or ramming, etc. Only pure speed.
I think that would have been an interesting race to watch.

The closest thing to that is probably hill climbing. Some of the unlimited cars at pikes peak are beyond insane... wings the size of a barn door

Human drivers provide a lot of human interest for the humans watching...

Just have it fly to the finish line.

Too dangerous. You got to spend the weight on roll cages to protect the driver and need rules to ensure that that happens.

See rule 3

The regulations exist both to put a cap on what the teams need to spend on R&D (if it's too much then smaller manufacturers and teams pull out and there's only two or three cars on the grid), and to make it safer for the drivers.

It bites both ways. If you restrict things heavily, the teams have to go after increasingly-expensive diminishing returns - meaning the biggest budgets usually win out.
At least if you have greater technical freedom, there’s the chance for someone from a less-funded team to concoct the next double-diffuser, as there’s probably less of a link between budget and sparks of innovation.

The solution seems simple to me: take the drivers out of the car. Let them operate the cars remotely, then they can get rid of all the safety regulations. It both removes the risk for the driver and makes the sport more exciting to see at the same time.

yuck.

The irony of course is that current very severe R&D limits on testing to reduce spending are significantly reducing competitiveness: if some team already has inferior car, they can’t improve it because they can’t test improvements!

You might end up with something like Red Bull X2010. But you'd also reach the limits of human ability to withstand G-forces without passing out, especially in high speed turns and under braking.

Maybe if we remove drivers altogether, things start to get interesting.
What I want is a race were all the cars don’t look identical.

Certainly some of that is down to regulation, but simple physics bears a lot of the responsibility. The competitive field will tend to converge on the most aerodynamic shape given the constraints of the day.

The drivers had more autonomy but it was still just the fastest car winning. The drivers now are so much more consistent and fit than their predecessors
And it's ERS not KERS these days.

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