Sorry I had to get away from F1, as a Scot constantly hearing Button and then Hamilton became very irritating. Don't get me wrong I'll watch it see how Colthard's going and appreciate that Hamilton is a great driver.

I prefer Nascar, motogp, Alms(at Sebring just about to start!), Indycar/|Champcar(just joined together), DTM, Superbikes and I could keep going. I even like the World of outlaws Dirt oval racing and Corr.

I would watch any of these before F1 far more competitive.

Just waiting for someone to have a go at me for the Nascar "they just go round in circles" is the usual..

I do think the Changes will help F1, more raw racing

Aye your right, i'll be the first.....NASCAR is absolutely gash!!!! Probably theeee most boring sport around! Golf on the tele is probably more exciting. Actually no wait a minute, cricket is worse than NASCAR, and maybe chess or tiddlywinks for example, but its round about similar excitement levels i think.

I'm also scottish, but really want to see hamilton win it. Would like to see coulthard win, but hey...that aint gonna happen is it :p

Oh and by the way, can someone actually tell me what time the race actually starts local time?? cant find a bloody answer! I see the programme starts at 3 30am, but i am offshore and up at 5 30am anyway for shift, so want to make sure i get my timings right and not get up either too early or too late.

Edited 15 March, 200818 yr by Polo01

so there trying to make it less like scaletrix?

WRC FTW

Mighty Minis FTW :-D

BTCC FTW, should be starting soon too?

The engine braking...apparently its electronically controlled to aid stability and they have to get rid of this. So now when changing down the box they'll have to pay more attention to trying not to lock the rear wheels. Bit different from "No engine braking" in your post Chris as all engines brake on over run to an extent?

Sorry I had to get away from F1, as a Scot constantly hearing Button and then Hamilton became very irritating.

well if the scots were any good at the sport you wouldn't have that problem

David Coulthard,Scotsman

F1 races won 13

Podiums 61

Career points 513 (a British record)

if he was still that good you'd constantly be hearing his name and you'd still be watching it

besides whats so bad about hearing of other British drivers doing well? surely thats why we watch sport, to see our fellow country men/women do well?

Sorry I had to get away from F1, as a Scot constantly hearing Button and then Hamilton became very irritating.

well if the scots were any good at the sport you wouldn't have that problem

David Coulthard,Scotsman

F1 races won 13

Podiums 61

Career points 513 (a British record)

if he was still that good you'd constantly be hearing his name and you'd still be watching it

besides whats so bad about hearing of other British drivers doing well? surely thats why we watch sport, to see our fellow country men/women do well?

Lets not forget Jackie Stewart who was quite good at the ol' F1 game.

The UK as a whole pumps out pretty good drivers.

Edited 15 March, 200818 yr by Tav

like the new rules.....making a start to make it more environmentally friendly....its just a start lol

and making the drivers drive! do what there paid to do well..

I like the new rules, lets hope it creates some better overtaking.

Anyone staying up to watch the race?

hahaa i thought about stayin up lol

I've always been of the opinion that F1 should be the pinnacle of what Man can do with a car. It should be almost rule free. Fastest car round the track wins.

Plus for those that think it's good that the driver has more to do with it now, don't forget F1 is a team sport with 2 championships on offer. Forcing teams to use the same technology removes the Team element to a certain extent.

I'm not saying that F1 might not be more exciting to watch now, but that wasn't really the point.

I'm not saying that F1 might not be more exciting to watch now, but that wasn't really the point.

It was never exciting in the first place!

I've always been of the opinion that F1 should be the pinnacle of what Man can do with a car. It should be almost rule free. Fastest car round the track wins.

Plus for those that think it's good that the driver has more to do with it now, don't forget F1 is a team sport with 2 championships on offer. Forcing teams to use the same technology removes the Team element to a certain extent.

I'm not saying that F1 might not be more exciting to watch now, but that wasn't really the point.

Its still going to need a great team of people to get the most out of the car setup and pitstop wise.

Its still going to need a great team of people to get the most out of the car setup and pitstop wise.

this quote has nothing to do with this thread, i was just gay enough to notice you had oldskool eminem under your name, oh happy memories

Its still going to need a great team of people to get the most out of the car setup and pitstop wise.

this quote has nothing to do with this thread, i was just gay enough to notice you had oldskool eminem under your name, oh happy memories

:-D

Well i watched it last night and thought it was pretty dam good What was it...only 9 drivers finishing :L And always love seeing the ferrari's make a balls up of it!

Well done hamilton, just showed is class with an effortless win! Raikonnen, what numpty! Couldnt handle the pressure at all!

Was good to see some lesser names up nearer the top, albeit maybe due to the amount of retirements, but the rookie bordais was doing a brilliant job of fending off alonso and kovalainen near the end before his engine let go :(

Its' about time those pansies got back to their roots and show us why their the best in the world. Instead of watching a procession of multi-million pound cars following each other round a race track for an hour we might get to see some racing. Think about it, where do you see the closest motor racing available? One make series'. Level the playing field and it stops being about the cars and more about the demi-god shitting himself when the back end steps out.

Really really good race. Glad i got up to watch.

I've always been of the opinion that F1 should be the pinnacle of what Man can do with a car. It should be almost rule free. Fastest car round the track wins.

Plus for those that think it's good that the driver has more to do with it now, don't forget F1 is a team sport with 2 championships on offer. Forcing teams to use the same technology removes the Team element to a certain extent.

I'm not saying that F1 might not be more exciting to watch now, but that wasn't really the point.

I agree to a certian extent, problem with that would be it would be a 2/3 team race, Ferrari, McLaren and Honda. I think the standardised ECU is crap, especially considering it is Mclaren built, it should have been built by Microsoft alone as it is a microsoft based ECU, with input from ALL the teams, not just Mclaren building maps and rev control (traction control substitute) to suit their car and evrybody else build a car around their ECU. F1 used to be the pinicale of motorsport technology, but with engine freezes, development freezes and such tigh stipulations on aerodynamic structures, not only are the cars starting to resemble too closley the other cars on the grid (If you want that, GP2 is what you need to watch, pure driver tallent shining through) but other forms of motorsport like WRC are introducing technologys that, from an engineering point of view, showing F1 how it is done.

Bernie Ecclestone and Max Mosley are killing the sport, the hypocracy of it, look at his sponsorship deals and marketing of future Australian GP's, his attitude is 'it needs to be shown at peak times for more money' and the reason for the new regulations are to save spending in the sport. The sense or reason is where?

Edited 16 March, 200818 yr by G40_Mike

I think the new rules are pretty good, will show more excitment, more crashes lol. Got up to watch the first 10 laps of the race, but i was knackered so went back to sleep.

For the purpose of livening F1 up, hows about they all have to get 3 pints of lager down beforehand?

I've always been of the opinion that F1 should be the pinnacle of what Man can do with a car. It should be almost rule free. Fastest car round the track wins.

Plus for those that think it's good that the driver has more to do with it now, don't forget F1 is a team sport with 2 championships on offer. Forcing teams to use the same technology removes the Team element to a certain extent.

I'm not saying that F1 might not be more exciting to watch now, but that wasn't really the point.

I agree to a certian extent, problem with that would be it would be a 2/3 team race, Ferrari, McLaren and Honda. I think the standardised ECU is crap, especially considering it is Mclaren built, it should have been built by Microsoft alone as it is a microsoft based ECU, with input from ALL the teams, not just Mclaren building maps and rev control (traction control substitute) to suit their car and evrybody else build a car around their ECU. F1 used to be the pinicale of motorsport technology, but with engine freezes, development freezes and such tigh stipulations on aerodynamic structures, not only are the cars starting to resemble too closley the other cars on the grid (If you want that, GP2 is what you need to watch, pure driver tallent shining through) but other forms of motorsport like WRC are introducing technologys that, from an engineering point of view, showing F1 how it is done.

Bernie Ecclestone and Max Mosley are killing the sport, the hypocracy of it, look at his sponsorship deals and marketing of future Australian GP's, his attitude is 'it needs to be shown at peak times for more money' and the reason for the new regulations are to save spending in the sport. The sense or reason is where?

Cant forget BMW, theres been a lot of talk about the 2 BMW drivers coming up in this season. Not to sound stupid, but what do you mean about WRC introducing technologies to show F1 how its done? I haven't watched WRC in years what have I missed?

Back to F1, the focus on actual racing has dropped too much. The sport seems to be about safety as opposed to excitement, and it's all fun and games making all the cars equal power and that, but certainly they could do something to allow more variation. They may have been before I was born but I do remember watching footage of the Tyrell 6 wheelers, now we seem to have all the cars looking exactly the same but with different paint schemes. The sport has got less exciting as all the new rules set back years ago, such as Traction Control and that have made it so much less exciting, and theyve realised that due to the loss of viewers. They're finally taking action to make the sport interesting again, but they're not completely there yet! I think they're off to a good start again but!

For the purpose of livening F1 up, hows about they all have to get 3 pints of lager down beforehand?

Lol too right, that would make it a hell of a lot more interesting. But I think they would need to shorten the race down to 3 laps, cause 3 laps with 3 pints in the serious heat of Melbourne would equal falling asleep behind the wheel lol.

its gotta be better as its guna show whos the better driver not whcih company can spend the most money to make their car quicker so no more schumacers and hamilton is guna own all allthough just read a comment on here QUOTE(Alexg40 @ Sunday 16th March 2008 - 12:43am)

I've always been of the opinion that F1 should be the pinnacle of what Man can do with a car. It should be almost rule free. Fastest car round the track wins.

this is actually good idea never thought bout it like that b4

Edited 16 March, 200818 yr by bentley_boy

yeah man good race, lewis hamiton for WC!

F1 = Money Machine, pure and simple.

Edited 16 March, 200818 yr by labougie

I think the standardised ECU is crap, especially considering it is Mclaren built, it should have been built by Microsoft alone as it is a microsoft based ECU, with input from ALL the teams, not just Mclaren building maps and rev control (traction control substitute) to suit their car and evrybody else build a car around their ECU.

I think a lot of the F1 teams are only complaining because it's costing them valuable development time trying to integrate a different ECU into their cars. However, you only do that system integration work once, and with hardware and software engineers that are supposed to be at the top of their game the different development environment shouldn't trouble them.

The teams don't have to use a McLaren calibration, and are free to alter a lot of the strategy as far as I can tell - so your last comments aren't strictly true... They do get supplied with some base code, but they can develop it for their own purposes.

Some of the frustrations come from the fact that certain aspects of the new MES-supplied system may have less power/features than the previous ECUs used by some of the teams - which makes it harder for creative software writing and electronic hardware development to circumnavigate the rules. e.g. control strategies that approximate to traction control (the 'rev control' you mentioned).

I read that some morons were claiming lots of engineers would lose their jobs because of a common ECU - they obviously thought each team would buy a box of tricks from MES and just bolt it onto their car, and sack their own ECU development staff. Jokers. Magnetti Marelli are probably going to be a bit pissed off that they're not supplying F1 ECUs now, but they've got a hell of a lot more going on than developing stuff for F1 anyway.

It definitely doesn't look good that the common ECU has a McLaren (well, Microsoft MES) badge on it - but if Marelli had got it, there'd have been claims of bias towards teams that were already using their systems, e.g. Ferrari! As with most things, the arguments are more to do with politics than actual engineering.