FIA bans radio chat about car and driver performance in F1

  • Thread starter Thread starter Wardez
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What might be a concern is that discussing fuel consumption is off limits, I think Singapore could be even more of a race of attrition than it usually is.
 
DK
What might be a concern is that discussing fuel consumption is off limits, I think Singapore could be even more of a race of attrition than it usually is.
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There's two options.

1. The teams all put enough fuel in the car to see the end of the race, plus a substantial buffer for anything silly the driver might get in his head to do.
2. They develop some method of communicating with the driver that avoids the rules, or at least avoids detection.

Given that people have already come up with half a dozen ways to fairly easily circumvent the radio ban, I doubt it will be difficult. It tends to restrict how much information can be transmitted, because you don't want to overload the driver by having them memorise and recall an enormous list of code words while they're doing 200mph. But it would seem pretty easy to have them memorise codes for a couple of key performance parameters, like fuel and tyres.

I'm betting they go for number 2. It remains to be seen how sneaky they are about it.
 
Bernie is now suggesting that the ban could be further extended to telemetry. If it happens, I'm guessing that the pit-to-car communication ban could be relaxed or lifted, because the teams will have less data to share. Which is probably the smarter solution as it's easier to enforce.
 
Wardez
- Informing a driver about his fuel consumption and how to manage his pace
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This i find ridiculous... Place limitations on how much fuel a car can suck up and be monitored only by the engineers, and don't tell the driver anything about whether or not he has broken the bounds and needs to change his setup to be within the rules...

Who is to blame if this does occur, and no contact is made? Red Bull could simply restate to the FIA that their metering device is showing a correct value, rather than the FIA's / or the fact they cannot tell Vettel or Ricciardo if they have breached bounds or not, since it is related to car performance.. and allowing an exemption is going to make this a mockery..

Give back Ricciardo's win then if this is so... I can't wait to see what Matchett thinks of it, whether he favors it or not
 
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ShiftingGears
Anything but promoting F1 using social media!
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Ecclestone does have a point when it comes to social media. Facebook is quickly going the same way as MySpace - a black hole. There's no long-term data on the effectiveness of social media, since it's only a relatively recent phenomenon. An official FOM YouTube channel might be nice, but I don't think the sport needs to embrace Facebook or Twitter or any other social media platform in order to survive.

spacecowboy73
Or getting rid of double points!
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Ecclestone has said the rule is likely to be repealed. But changing the rules mid-season can be a tricky affair, especially when it comes to points. Teams like points, and the more they get, the happier they will be. A lot of them will be looking to Abu Dhabi to pick up extra WCC positions.
 
prisonermonkeys
Ecclestone does have a point when it comes to social media. Facebook is quickly going the same way as MySpace - a black hole. There's no long-term data on the effectiveness of social media, since it's only a relatively recent phenomenon. An official FOM YouTube channel might be nice, but I don't think the sport needs to embrace Facebook or Twitter or any other social media platform in order to survive.
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Actually that is not true. Our comms department just installed some software that will monitor social media sites in real time, you can choose single or multiple sites. A case in point: Caterpiller was getting hammered by some bad news going viral on some foreign contracts. They saw this on this software and their PR guys released a bunch of known "feel good" commercials all over the net. It completely quashed the bad PR they were getting. I not real sure how I feel about Mega corps, politicians, news agencies or governments having this power, but it can and is happening. Other then that, the software is really cool.
 
But that doesn't address the underlying issues - one, that social media is transient, and that the available platforms have a limited lifespan compared to conventional media; and two, that Formula 1 does not need to be on social media in order to succeed.
 
You don't need it. But reinforcing brand recognition and... as in the example above, answering criticisms in the medium in which they are raised, helps boost the brand.

I'm not overly fond of the meme-farmishness of having a dedicated Facebook presence, but our social media presence boosts website traffic by a few million hits a month.

This isn't my only discussion group for F1. There are a lot of us fans who share no common real-life hangouts or internet forums who hook up on social media to discuss the race. There's a market there. A big one.

Better yet, having a definite Facebook / Twitter / Google+ presence gives you a powerful tool for shaping opinions about your brand and tailoring the product based on feedback from customers.

Yes, it's a double-edged sword, as using that feedback properly takes some skilled analysis, but at least it'll help them avoid the negative press from issues like the radio message ban.

However transient social media may be, the current social media sites are very powerful... having survived on the market long enough for previously untapped markets and modern smartphones to catch up. Facebook may still go the way of Friendster and MySpace... but not for another several years. To ignore it while waiting for that oft-reported death and decline would be silly at this point.
 
prisonermonkeys
Ecclestone has said the rule is likely to be repealed. But changing the rules mid-season can be a tricky affair, especially when it comes to points. Teams like points, and the more they get, the happier they will be. A lot of them will be looking to Abu Dhabi to pick up extra WCC positions.
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Oh I realize mid season sporting rule changes are hard to get passed, it's just that it seems to be almost unanimously disliked and they couldn't get rid of it for the betterment of the sport. Also, they keep going on about improving the show and what the fans want put couldn't change this. :rolleyes:


As far as the social media thing, I think a youtube channel would be really cool, and I wish FOM would stop taking down every F1 related video they find. I think that policy helps more than hurts when it comes to publicity.
 
mustafur
Im just going to go ahead and say after seeing it in practise its got to be the stupidest rule I have ever seen.
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That and the most hilarious "Checo, you need to be diff (or what ever it was) to...Oh wait I can't say that, heh" I guess the cheerleading should start now. So instead "Checo, you just go fast and become fast, you are fast!!!", that works.
 
spacecowboy73
Oh I realize mid season sporting rule changes are hard to get passed, it's just that it seems to be almost unanimously disliked and they couldn't get rid of it for the betterment of the sport. Also, they keep going on about improving the show and what the fans want put couldn't change this.
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The teams will *always* do what is in their interests, and they play on the perception that they're good and the FIA/FOM is bad, even when they are the last people who should be trusted with deciding anything.

On Friday, Vijay Mallya responded to Bernie's suggestion of three-car teams by saying that prize money should be distributed more fairly to support smaller teams. And while that's a fair suggestion - it was very popular among fans - it's also a complete crock. If a team has a budget of $100 million in 2014, of which $10 million comes from prize money, and that prize money gets doubled in 2015, that team isn't going to limit itself to a budget of $100 million. No, they'll budget for $110 million, which will only drive costs up.

If Mallya's comments are going to bring about any meaningful change, then the teams have to get serious about cost cutting. They need to stop pretending that they have cut costs by saving $2 million when all they have done is agree to less pre-season testing when meanwhile, they're happily spending $200 million on their season.
 
prisonermonkeys
Ecclestone does have a point when it comes to social media. Facebook is quickly going the same way as MySpace - a black hole. There's no long-term data on the effectiveness of social media, since it's only a relatively recent phenomenon. An official FOM YouTube channel might be nice, but I don't think the sport needs to embrace Facebook or Twitter or any other social media platform in order to survive.
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I just think that is worth exploring those options (ESPECIALLY a youtube presence) instead of publically displaying such little faith in the actual product.
 
I actually prefer the current method, with drivers, teams and journalists running their own Twitter accounts. We get way more fringe content, like when F1 Fanatic pointed out that the FIA uses a special machine to remove the white road markings in Singapore.
 
should make a new rule, one that bans the FIA with medling with the rules anymore because its becoming a joke now.

this rule is stupid and needs to be banned, the only reason this is happening is because they allow us to here all radio chat, you would be blind to think this didn'thappen in the senna and prost days the only difference is it was kept within the team.

could you imagen if we got this much radio chat in a series like DTM where team orders are rampant, there wouldn't be a single person wanting to watch it.
 
prisonermonkeys
The teams will *always* do what is in their interests, and they play on the perception that they're good and the FIA/FOM is bad, even when they are the last people who should be trusted with deciding anything.
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This is true. The teams being in charge is what led to the downfall of champcar. I always keep that situation in the back of my mind whenever I read news about teams negotiating with FIA/FOM.

prisonermonkeys
On Friday, Vijay Mallya responded to Bernie's suggestion of three-car teams by saying that prize money should be distributed more fairly to support smaller teams. And while that's a fair suggestion - it was very popular among fans - it's also a complete crock. If a team has a budget of $100 million in 2014, of which $10 million comes from prize money, and that prize money gets doubled in 2015, that team isn't going to limit itself to a budget of $100 million. No, they'll budget for $110 million, which will only drive costs up.

If Mallya's comments are going to bring about any meaningful change, then the teams have to get serious about cost cutting. They need to stop pretending that they have cut costs by saving $2 million when all they have done is agree to less pre-season testing when meanwhile, they're happily spending $200 million on their season.
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Yeah, that is true as well. I didn't see that interview but I can only hope Mallya's talking about FOM money distribution as a whole since most the money goes to CVC. That to me is one of the biggest problems with F1 at the moment.
 
However the money is distributed, it doesn't fix the problem - the teams are responsible for escalating costs. If the two-car model is going to remain viable, then the onus is on the teams themselves to make meaningful cuts to their expenditure.
 
prisonermonkeys
However the money is distributed, it doesn't fix the problem - the teams are responsible for escalating costs. If the two-car model is going to remain viable, then the onus is on the teams themselves to make meaningful cuts to their expenditure.
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it would fix the problem if they distributed it more fairly, the bottom teams are left to dry while the top teams get the bulk of the revenue, its not sustainble at present to keep a grid the size it is now and won't be untill its changed.

there is a reason the top teams don't want anything changed because they are fine, what the bottom teams need is a base bonus of renenue for being in the championship like a Premier league team in EPL say it being 35% of total Shared revenue then the remaining 65% on placings.

Compare that to now which the bottom half get about 15% of revenue and the top get 85%
 
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No, it won't change anything. All it will do is drive up costs. Like I said: a team might have a budget of $50 million plus prize money. This "more fair allocation" of prize money might give them a budget of $55 million, which sounds great - until you realise that if you give the teams more money, they are going to spend more money. All you have effectively done is defer the problem for a few years. Re-allocating prize money is only half a solution - there needs to be meaningful cost-cutting introduced.
 
Getting more TV money would help small teams significantly and if your example is how they are going to continue to budget then I have no sympathy for that team if they ended up budgeting themselves out of F1.

Even if all the teams were financially sound, the current TV money allocation isn't fair, but again the teams only have themselves to blame since they agreed to the deal in the first place. :rolleyes:
 
The current allocation of funds is designed to weed out short-term projects that show up, put in minimal effort, pick up prize money and cash out; the Formula 1 equivalent of a NASCAR start-and-park.
 

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