2012 Formula 1 Season Paddock

My interest in NASCAR comes and goes. Both series have their merits. I grew up in the southeast, about and hour from Charlotte, where damn near everybody races or knows someone who does. The pit stops are slower, but they use less guys and they don't get to sit there and wait on the car. Also, the cars are steel, not fiberglass. But hey, at least they are moving to fuel injection this season.

F1 is like chess, NASCAR is like checkers. More strategy in F1 which is good and bad (team orders boo).

I would like to go to an F1 race in person to really see how the experiences differ. While watching cars go in a circle sounds boring, at least you can see the whole track (the ones I've been to anyway). It seems that only seeing the cars zip by once every minute or so would be boring. Correct me if I'm wrong but NASCAR sounds more fun. Any of you who have been to an F1 race care to share any experiences?

 

best way i could put it in short words is, going to a nascar race is to watch the race on sunday, going to formula 1 is a whole weekend experience, there is much more to it.

plus you have a completely different atmosphere with the European people and the manufacturers involved.

 

When I go to a NASCAR race it's for the weekend, practice and truck race on Friday, qualifying and Nationwide race on Saturday, and the Cup race on Sunday. Do they usually run support series leading up to the main event in F1? If so what types of cars? Do the drivers cross over much?

I went to a World Superbike GP at Laguna Seca once. I imagine it might be similar to what you mean by the manufacturer involvement. It was cool but it almost seemed like a bike trade show that happened to have a race nearby.

Either way, a race is a race so if the stars and planets align, I would love to go to a GP.

Good luck in your racing Jorge!

 

there is usually lots of support racing, GP3, GP2, Porsche supercup or some other GT class. so in that way its similar to the nascar weekend, but by weekend experience I also mean stuff like the events they host, the nightlife, the concerts, and at the race you can do a lot of walking around to see different corners and the history there.

and thank you!

 

Pirelli is going to make the tires less predictable this year

http://en.espnf1.com/f1/motorsport/story/70134.html

 

Mercedes official launch next week at Circuit de Catalunya.
http://en.espnf1.com/f1/motorsport/story/70374.html

 

I call Bullshit

http://en.espnf1.com/redbull/motorsport/story/70368.html

 

You don't think there are team orders / agreements in NASCAR?

 

Oh I know there are. Sometimes between teammates, sometimes between teams with "technical alliances", sometimes it's manufacturers telling drivers not to help other makes. It was so nuts last year that the drivers at some races would have their radios programmed with all of their teammates freqs and about ten other drivers. They were constantly talking to each other. Got to the point that NASCAR has banned driver-to-driver radio communication. I have seen where team orders such as having a car running in the back purposefully cause a caution to help a front running teammate result in fines or points deduction from NASCAR. Those things are hard to police though.

Good on Webber for disobeying team orders.

 

He is a employee and if he disobeys orders the team can do bad he should be penalized for that. JMO though.

 

An employee, yes, but he should be a racer first, which means going for the win. If he's not striving to be the number one driver at RedBull, then why have him there? If I were a team owner I would want my drivers to be each other's biggest competition. I would want them to push each other to excellence. JMO

 

I do agree, but there are limits. If his actions hurt the team you can only penalize him or lose control of the team. In a perfect world there would be a friendly rivalry between drivers.

 

Team orders make strategic sense , Red Bull saying their drivers are free to race each other and then telling Webber not to challenge Vettel is BS .

 

I think at redbull it will be the same way it is for us in formula 3.. we start at zero, no number 1 driver. But as the season progresses, if driver 1 has 5 wins and driver 2 has no wins, obviously the team will start favoring driver 1 because the reason they are in it is to win championships. same thing as what happened when redbull only had 1 new front wing and webber wanted it but vettel got it because he was ahead on points.. Webber has no right no complain.

 

I agree , team > driver

 

Watched my first F1 race today. Speed replayed the Germany Grand Prix from last year. All in all it was really fun, learned a lot. I like that it doesn't drag on for hours, 1hr 45 or so of actual racing is great. The speed and de-accel/accel is ridiculous.

The only negative feedback I would have is that it seems like the top 4-5 drivers really separate themselves from the pack, cars get spread out a lot and it can have some stretches of boring laps. Is that pretty common?

Other than that it was great and I'll definitely be watching more replays, have the DVR set for tomorrow and several more this and next week.

 

There can be some stretches of laps without much passing , kind of the nature of the beast with there only being one racing line through a lot of the sections of track at those speeds , also , the cars intentionally hang a bit back from the car in front because the leading car " disturbs " the airflow over the following car , diminishing it's downforce .

 

I also got the feeling that Ferrari srsly underperforms? The announcers seem to expect them to do quite a bit better, spend a lot of time talking them up. It was funny, they almost seemed disappointed when Hamilton won.

Also, the DSR is really cool. I like the amount of info they show you on the screen vs Nascar. DSR, KPH, RPM etc.

 

The Ferrari car last year was a disappointment .