When they have to put labels on the fronts of the cars for the fans to know which model is which, I'd say they've gone too far in making the cars all alike.
Just last night, I was talking about the FIA's apparent aspirations to make F1 a spec series, and how I didn't appreciate the COT, either. As I also said, a decal isn't fooling anyone.
On the one hand, it's been pretty cool having at least 19 of the 20 F1 cars within 1.5s of each other in nearly every session, and quite unexpected considering how much new design work was needed for this season's new rules. And unlike NASCAR, there's never been an expectation that a casual viewer would recognize them as racing versions of familiar road cars. You're expected to have a somewhat educated eye to recognize the differences from one to another.
But I sure hope that they don't become as generic as Indycars. Bobby Unser visited the broadcast booth during one of the Indy 500 practices, and he was rightfully blunt about how boring it was watching everyone in absolutely identical Dallara-Hondas. (A "Honda" engine, incidentally, built in the same facility as the F1 "Mercedes" powerplant.)
I haven't followed C-O-T development that much. Do teams still build their own chassis? It used to be that Hendrick, Childress, Roush, etc., would sell extra cars to some of the smaller teams and there were interesting layout variations between them, so that a "Chevy" might have have more in common beneath the skin with a "Ford" than it did with another team's "Chevy."
3 comments:
Just last night, I was talking about the FIA's apparent aspirations to make F1 a spec series, and how I didn't appreciate the COT, either. As I also said, a decal isn't fooling anyone.
On the one hand, it's been pretty cool having at least 19 of the 20 F1 cars within 1.5s of each other in nearly every session, and quite unexpected considering how much new design work was needed for this season's new rules. And unlike NASCAR, there's never been an expectation that a casual viewer would recognize them as racing versions of familiar road cars. You're expected to have a somewhat educated eye to recognize the differences from one to another.
But I sure hope that they don't become as generic as Indycars. Bobby Unser visited the broadcast booth during one of the Indy 500 practices, and he was rightfully blunt about how boring it was watching everyone in absolutely identical Dallara-Hondas. (A "Honda" engine, incidentally, built in the same facility as the F1 "Mercedes" powerplant.)
I haven't followed C-O-T development that much. Do teams still build their own chassis? It used to be that Hendrick, Childress, Roush, etc., would sell extra cars to some of the smaller teams and there were interesting layout variations between them, so that a "Chevy" might have have more in common beneath the skin with a "Ford" than it did with another team's "Chevy."
Amazing. And very moving.
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