I was rooting for Sergeant being an American driver. Max climbing from the rear pack to P-2 was suprising, but also fortified my belief that F1 is not nearly as competitive as Indycar even on its best day.
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Alonso penalty overturned! Upon review the FIA decided that the rear jack touching the car did not count as āworking on the car before the penalty was servedā, as was the case with other similar penalties in the past.
The FIA still needs a better way to make this process clearer.
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Was just about to post about it @tjkoyen, beat me to the punch. Makes the FIA look a bit silly, but glad some common sense prevailed. Definitely some room for improvement on the penalty systems.
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I reckon Saudi Arabia was a decent weekend. Letās be real, we have to be thankful for any race Verstappen doesnāt win. He just looks so dominant.
Thereās way less competition in IndyCar.
Alan, Can you explain what you mean? I think a few Americans would argue that the ācompetitionā on the track is more appealing. Its apples to oranges in my opinion, but to blindly say something like that makes me curious what you mean.
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every race the same chassis wins - a spec Dallara. You have one of two engine packages. I know thereās some damper development but thereās materially less competition, thus itās less competitive. The competition, to me, is less appealing because thereās simply a lot less at stake. I watch IndyCar when itās on, but I canāt tell you who won the first race, and if I could remember I donāt remember the team. Thereās a good reason the F1 thread on here is vastly larger than the IndyCar one, so I donāt thereās evidence itās more appealing.
āCompetitiveā can mean different things. The level of competition in F1 is higher and you have to also remember itās not only a driverās championship, but a technical/constructorās/engineering championship, so the field is not bunched together as IndyCar is, where everyone is on the same equipment essentially.
The field in IndyCar is more ācompetitiveā in the sense that the margins are smaller since itās a spec series.
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I do enjoy a semantic based battle 
On a different note Sainz says the new cars arenāt much better to follow in now than what we had before. DRS is still doing a ton of heavy lifting. https://imgur.com/a/ZGWKnbg
Is it just me or is a pass under DRS not really a pass? I sort of donāt get it. Isnāt the tow enough of an advantage down straight?
Tow isnāt powerful enough really to off-set the losses of dirty air. I agree a DRS pass isnāt really a DRS pass, but without a huge reduction is d/f reliance then thereās not much that can be done. Even in IndyCar, when all else is equal (not differences in tyre compounds, temperates and/or weight from fuel), the cars fan out and become a bit static.
The DRS zone in Saudi was way too big and made the overtake too easy. Lots of tracks have that issue and they have to tweak how long the DRS zones are.
DRS sucks and universally I think everyone hates it but it is a necessary evil to have some actual on-track action with the way these aero-dependant cars work.
IMO DRS would be more palatable if the driver could use it whenever he thinks he has the sack to do it.
The design is that the leading driver is nobbled. If it was open to use at any point itād negate its purpose. Also the engineers would engineers the risk out of it too.
So what would happen if we drove an f1 car like an lo, right in the bumper of the guy ahead? Explain the dirty air effect plz.
I particularly like the reduction in airflow speed going over the following car as part of the general dirty air construct.
Also the increased upwash in the new aero regs has been hypethesised a reason for less effective tow. Rob peter to pay paul type scenario.
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The car needs clean flowing air over the wings and aero surfaces to generate downforce. Downforce provides most of the grip in an F1 car.
If you are behind a car, you are getting less clean air by way of turbulence coming off the front car, and less air overall as the front car punches a hole in the air to provide the slipstream. Rear car in turn has less downforce and canāt corner as well.
So basically no grip. Zing. Got it.
I came across this recently which I thought was a relatively unknown secret cool thing https://mantiumchallenge.com/
right, anyone up for a kartpulse team
?
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