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The gulf can be seen when Williams with a Mercedes engine lapped twice by the works Mercedes car ... it's obviously a crap car.
Remember, it's easier to criticise than create!
Obviously we had dominance in the past. The 1988 season with McLaren winning all but one race comes to mind.
As Fret says, cars getting lapped twice by cars with the same engine means there's a problem. Aero development is everything. Currently next year's Audi R8 LMS is getting tested: new aero keeps a fairly venerable car going. If your aero is shit you have no chance. A team that both builds it's own engine and has the money for serious aero research and development is way ahead of the pack, and this is what we have seen with Mercedes and Ferrari this year. Safety car interventions have done for more to jiggle up the grid than overtaking has this year.
You might as well bring the big hand from the national lottery back and just use it to select a driver to DNF. That would be as entertaining.
When Toyota came within a lap of winning Le Mans in 2016 before a turbo malfunction scuppered them, that was truly dramatic. Mansell's blown tyre at Adelaide. Carlos Sainz losing a rally world Championship 500 metres from the line when his Toyota expired.
Nobody is saying that we need to make cars more unreliable. It's unarguable though that issues with reliability meant more jumbled up results than we have now (try the 1982 season with 11 winners for instance).
In this case, the issue is seeing how easily Hamilton passed over half the field. They didn't fight him despite him trying to pass for position. Pretty much everyone gave up and let him though. When that includes a driver like Alonso, that's a sad statement on the lack of competition in F1 right now.
If three teams dominate, and two of those are several horsepower quicker than the third team, then it makes for tight racing over a very narrow field.
On any given match day in the premier league there are 20 teams playing 10 matches, and even the likes of Southampton or West Ham have a chance of beating a Man City or Chelsea, and certainly have a chance of scoring goals even if they don't win. Obviously we all know it's unlikely, but you don't know for sure that the better team will always win.
We've lost that in F1 - we know that every race this year will likely be won by one of 3 teams, and no midfield cars will be above 5th place. And for each given track we usually know by the end of Friday which single team is most likely to take the win, and which of the other 2 stands any chance of beating them. But we know Force India won't win. And Renault won't win. And it's absolutely certain that McLaren and Williams won't win, whether they're fielding a couple of pay drivers or possibly the best driver in the history of the sport.
The season is one long test to see who had built the best car this year. Nothing more.
Why we expect anything more from it I have no idea, but we love the idea of parity in a sport whose signature is technical development and disparity.
I know the gulf has been there. Generally in the BTCC in the 1990's you'd get one team that walked away with it but the racing behind was very good. F1 doesn't really have that.
Yeah, I get that. I freely admit it's just me and F1. We don't really jive at the minute.
The most extreme was probably 1982 - you had 11 different winners over only 16 races. And 18 (EIGHTEEN!) drivers from 10 teams shared the podium spots. Sure in a year like '88 you had ridiculous domination by McLaren, at the very front, but still 10 guys from 8 teams getting podiums in your 16 races.
This year we're roughly halfway through our 21 races, have so far had 4 winners, and a total of 7 guys from 4 teams on the podium. At most we might hit 8 drivers from 5 teams by the end of the year if Sainz or Hulkenberg finally get a proper result for Renault.
I know that pace has always tended to lead to 2-by-2 results when cars aren't breaking down, but at least in the past you knew something *might* happen to get one of the midfield a great result and give us an underdog with a fighting chance.
http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/comment/809811/#Comment_809811
2014 3 winners
2015 3 winners
2016 4 winners
2017 5 winners
2018 4 winners so far
So an average of 3.8 different winners per season. 2014 to 2017 is 3.75.
1982 to 2013 was 5.44. 2003 to 2013 (Red Bull dominance and the current point scoring system) = 5.45.
1988 (McLaren dominance) had 3 winners, Ferrari dominance in 2001 and 2002 had five and four winners respectively.
Going with the number of drivers who scored podiums: I shall focus on 2003-2013.
Number of drivers who scored podium positions:
2003 10
2004 9
2005 13
2006 12
2007 8
2008 13
2009 13
2010 8
2011 7
2012 12
2013 8
113/11 = 10.27
2014 10
2015 10
2016 9
2017 7
2018* 7
=8.6 over all these years, 2014-2017 = 9
I use 1988 as my yardstick for one team domination (Senna and Prost in the McLaren Honda) = 10 drivers ended on the podium. For those curious about the mad 1982 season with 11 winners, you had 18 different drivers on the podium in 16 races.
No real waffle to add, just curious about numbers it feeds the dormant autistic side of me.
# drivers & teams winning, per year, since 1980:
Not much to speak of here. Small reduction, but if you take away the hybrid era there is only a very slight downward trend - we've regularly had seasons with only 4 driver and 2 or 3 teams since the mid-1990s and that's natural in any season where there are only 2 or 3 cars capable of winning.
# drivers & teams getting podiums, per year, since 1980:
This looks a bit worse. We've had the odd shit season since the early 90's, but there's definitely a downward trend. Likewise with teams, because with increased reliability your top 2 or 3 team are sharing the podiums places far more often.
But you also have to consider the number of races. In 1980 there were only 14 races meaning a total of 42 podium spots available in a season. These days we have north of 60 podium places per year. So let's divide by the # of races...
# drivers and teams on podium, per year, since 1980 - normalised by # of races
A bit steeper decline now but it looks like we're already at the lower limit in terms of the team figures, and at least now we're well above the lowest points of 2014/2015.
But then you have the podium figures, and everything is much worse:
Clearly there is a massive decline in # team AND drivers reaching the podium over a season. You still have the odd batshit season like 2012, but generally it's pretty shitty. I really think this is the major factor they can try and change with the new regs - and particuarly the cost-cutting stuff, which will hopefully allow the midfield to get closer to the frontrunners, giving more opportunities to capitalise when there's an outside factor (safety car, rain, etc) that affects the race.
You could argue that the higher number of drivers & teams in the past would also make it harder for any single driver or team to get a win/podium, but I think given the "extra" teams were generally backmarkers I haven't looked at the impact of that at all.
What I do know is I'd love to see what sort of analysis Liberty are doing - I bet Brawn & Symonds have got immense quantities of data at their disposal AND the brains to know when useful conclusions can be drawn
The drivers are machine operators. Talented, yes, but they are mostly all capable of putting any of those cars in the grid position of which it is capable compared with the others.
You are only seeing the difference between driver a and driver b in any team.
Keep the reliability and in my opinion, kill the technical performance disparity. It's the only way for there to be good racing, consistently, in formula one.
As interesting as it might occasionally be to see the new cars for the new season and analyse the differences, I don't give a toss about that stuff on a Sunday afternoon.
TBH 82 was really only exceptional for driver stats because 3 of the top guys all stopped during the season - Villeneuve & Pironi died, and Carlos Reutemann retired to go rallying - it's possible that all of these may have taken more wins & podiums from the other guys had they all raced right through the season - certainly Tambay at the very least, as he took Villeneuve's slot at Ferrari.