4 ms·

Game used to be about driving everyday civilian cars fast. Now its about who can parse the rules the finest. It isn't "organizing" things that spoils them, it

Game used to be about driving everyday civilian cars fast. Now its about who can parse the rules the finest. It isn't "organizing" things that spoils them, its the organizers.

I_Am_Nous 3y ago
Eh, there has always been an amount of bending rules or capitalizing on design gaps in racing. NASCAR and Formula 1 have always had people adding things they shouldn't, from extra long, curly fuel pipes which can hold nearly an extra gallon in NASCAR to Ferrari using a secondary oil tank to add extra power by burning oil in F1. Or their special fuel pump which moved the regulated amount of fuel during the 32 times a second a sensor was verifying flow rate, but running it at max flow rate when the sensor wasn't polling. I don't like it anymore than you do, but it's not exactly a new issue.
- Am4TIfIsER0ppos 3y ago
  I saw Rush the other week (film about James Hunt and Nikki Lauda) and that reminded me that F1 used to have cars with 6 wheels to which I thought "take me back" even though that was before I was born. As an example in contrast today you have tires made as poorly as possible. Why shouldn't you have a gas guzzler if you think you can justify the weight of fuel, or the extra time cost of refueling? Refueling, do you remember that? I don't watch anymore after seeing how the sausage is made.
  - I_Am_Nous 3y ago
    I'm too young to have seen any refueling races by the time I could watch F1, but I can agree with you that over-regulation seem to stifle innovation. Even if the innovation it stifles is "we put a w16 engine in a car just to see if it would work" (it didn't) it made for races you weren't totally sure who would even take part since there were more teams than grid slots, and qualifying actually had more excitement than just seeing who had pole. Did that quirky team with the experimental aero package make it into the race, or did the team with the heavier engine and worse braking make it? Regarding tires, the lack of refueling means they have to make some kind of choice to add strategic opportunity and forcing at least one tire change per race is about the only thing they can do. It's a lot more interesting to watch something like IMSA where a damaged car is put into the pit, a mechanic jumps on the bent hood to squash it back down, and then they put some sturdy duct tape on it to hold it down for the rest of the race. In F1 any damage means you won't get into the top 10, so you won't get points, so you may as well not even finish the race. Racing still needs to be a spectacle at some point, and I can only imagine being a fan who watched Senna in the wet back in the day, engine screaming, passes made with skill, and comparing it to a modern race where the engines are quiet and they had to add push to pass systems like DRS and the "add 160 horsepower" electric motors just to try to allow drivers to pass in the first place because the cars are so much larger than they used to be. I'll always be a motorsport fan but F1 kind of seems like a shell of what it could have been. I suppose this is where it "gets political" but the F1 regulations are also attempting to reduce the carbon footprint of the sport. A lofty and worthy goal, but I don't think the cars themselves make up the bulk of the carbon footprint - transporting the cars all around the world does. So how about we make the cars fun to watch again? Improve the carbon footprint of the transport, and don't restrict the cars to try to offset it. Just let the cars be cars! It feels like artificially limiting the amount of food you can feed a champion race horse just to say "We reduced grain dependence across the whole sport!"
    - bluecalm 3y ago
      The problem is that car racing is very boring if you allow engineers to go wild. For example using airflow to increase grip at some point gives advantage to the car in front. Pair that with powerful engine and there won't be any passing ever once that car is in front. Making fast, unpassable car is just to easy. Regulations are about crippling them enough to make racing interesting. If you have to do it anyway then why not add other lofty goals like driver's safety, efficiency, disallowing solutions that would drain everyone's budget etc.
      - withinboredom 3y ago
        That’s like saying once Usain Bolt was born, there’s no point in running any more. There may be a team always in front, but the simpler rule would be: once you make it, you are out for a season or two. That drives incentive to not be over-the-top winning unless you want a guaranteed one-and-done team.
      - NovemberWhiskey 3y ago
        >The problem is that car racing is very boring if you allow engineers to go wild. Or ridiculously dangerous. The cars are much less fast than they could be.
    - the_gipsy 3y ago
      I always thought some innovations in F1 are going back into the consumer market. So it would make sense to push for emission efficiency on the engineering side, regardless of the emissions due to the whole event logistics. With your horse analogy, imagine mixing in the champion's genes back into work horses. Probably a net win.
    - simion314 3y ago
      >So how about we make the cars fun to watch again? F1 can be very boring, the guys that were starting first were finishing first, I would watch it to see overtakes and piloting skills and the problem is that without limits the company with the big money will win. This is not fun, it does not make money and rules change to limit costs so all the teams can compete using a similar budget. I stopped watching 2 decades ago, I stopped also watching or reading the summaries, it got to boring for me but I suppose that there are soem that want to see that kind of sport where the teams have no limit and you just watch the cars running around in circles and admire them. I think there are only a few engines providers anyway , so I am not sure on what they are optimizing on this days, maybe aerodynamics and fuel strategy.
  - arethuza 3y ago
    F1 has had lots of interesting things over the years - my favourite being the 1.5l 600HP V16 from the 1950s. Didn't work terribly well but worth listening to a recording of one because it sounded awesome - there are still a few running examples. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Racing_Motors_V16 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Racing_Motors_V16 Edit: BRM are sometimes referred to as "British Racing Misery"
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    >in contrast today you have tires made as poorly as possible That's not entirely true. F1 tires today are vastly grippier and stronger than they were in the James Hunt Nikki Lauda era because the downforces they need to withstand are also much stronger. Sure, by F1 regulations, Pirelli needs to intentionally make the upper layer of their tires have a short lifespan in order to make the race more exiting by forcing the team strategy to come to the pits more often when their tires wear out, instead of staying out the entire race on one set of tires, but you can't say the tires are made as poorly as possible. In fact the innovations in them are quite remarkable. They're intentionally not as hard wearing as the Michelins of the Michel Schumacher era but they're way grippier.
- cjrp 3y ago
  It feels like the rule-bending used to be more obvious (to the naked eye), like strapping a massive fan to the back of the car. Now it's extending some bodywork by a few millimetres, etc. It's still impressive, but there's less for the layman to see.
  - I_Am_Nous 3y ago
    Or even the more boring stuff like "F1 team Racing Point's brake ducts look suspiciously similar to the brake ducts of the previous year Mercedes, which won the constructor cup..." because Mercedes was kind of the parent team to Racing Point and "shared" the design. I also remember Ferrari trying a new way to attach mirrors, which was deemed illegal, but it shows how tiny the gains they chase are.
    - persnickety 3y ago
      What is the rule violation with the brakes? Is it not allowed to reuse designs from elsewhere?
      - Kubuxu 3y ago
        Some components of the car can be shared, others have to be shared, but break ducts IIRC are in the third category where you have to design them yourself.
- lostlogin 3y ago
  > there has always been an amount of bending rules or capitalizing on design gaps in racing. The America’s Cup, (yacht racing) is another good example of this. Half the competition is in the court room, which isn’t that interesting from my point of view. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/America%27s_Cup https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/America%27s_Cup
itomato 3y ago
Welcome to racing. It never was simply about "driving civilian cars fast", it was about skirting rules, in this case, alcohol prohibition. They were always modified to be faster and to hide booze. From day one.
- fragmede 3y ago
  Racing predates prohibition, and even cars. Ever since humans could move on two feet there have been contests to see who can go faster. Hell, the origin of racing even predates humans, where the deer that could run faster than the wolf got to survive. Thus young animals race just to develop survival skills. Car racing then, is as old as cars, the first of which came out in 1885, by Mr. Benz. The first recognized car race was in 1890's France, before gangsters were racing cops during prohibition, which started in 1919. Nascar got its start where you state, but racing is bigger and started earlier than Nascar.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  Why is that relevant 100 years after prohibition ended?
  - rascul 3y ago
    It's not really, except historically. The early stock car racing drivers in the USA were often bootleggers who transported illegal liquor so had fast cars to run from the police. Eventually they organized and that led to the forming of NASCAR.
rags2riches 3y ago
Folk racing has an interesting rule: > Anyone can place a fixed-price bid on any car, and the buyer is then chosen by draw. The fixed price in Finland is €2,000 (≈US$1,650) or 8,000 SEK (≈US$1,000) in Sweden. Refusing to sell is grounds for having one's competition licence revoked https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folkrace https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folkrace
- fragmede 3y ago
  24 hours of LeMons has (had?) a similar rule. All cars must cost $500, and to help enforce that, they have a claiming rule, where after a race, organizers can buy any car from a team for $500.
  - thaumasiotes 3y ago
    The claiming rule won't enforce the racing rule. All it does is limit the value of the car to "the value of winning the race, plus $500".
    - geon 3y ago
      The value of winning LeMons is zero, so...
      - thaumasiotes 3y ago
        In that case, there's no need to enforce any rules! The cost of cheating already exceeds any potential benefits.
        fragmede 3y ago
        > BS Factor: To prevent cheating, all cars will be inspected by a panel appointed by the Organizers. At that time, all teams will be given an opportunity to describe the car’s purchase and prep. If the panel believes the limit set out in Rule 4.1 has been exceeded, it will assign a Bullshit Factor (BSF) equal to one BSF per $10 above the limit. The entry will be docked one lap for each BSF assigned. (Ten dollars = one BSF = one lap.) Entrants are very, very, exceedingly strongly encouraged to bring pre-race-prep photographs, verifiable receipts, notarized testimonials, plus any and all other supporting evidence to Tech/BS Inspection. Or at least make up plausible-sounding stories in advance. https://24hoursoflemons.com/prices-rules/#vehicle-price https://24hoursoflemons.com/prices-rules/#vehicle-price
Gualdrapo 3y ago
Many argue the same principle is being applied to professional cycling.
- damontal 3y ago
  I remember reading that even in early Tours de France riders would surreptitiously jump into a car to get ahead in the race.
keiferski 3y ago
This is one reason why I like keirin, Japanese bicycle racing. Everyone has to use the same old steel frame bikes, there is no contact with the outside world (for riders) before races, and the uniform colors are randomly selected. The funny part is that keirin is one of the few sports in Japan that people can bet on (with large prizes for winners, too), so the mere inclusion of gambling doesn't necessarily mean bad outcomes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keirin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keirin
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Fradow 3y ago
"used to be"? When is that? There are lots of very interesting old stories about rule bending in Nascar. Actually, it apparently started from the very first official Nascar race [1]. If you want racing series about driving civilian cars fast, they do exist. Nascar just isn't one of them. The only one I really heard about is "Stock Miata" racing, but I'm sure there are other series using stock street cars, or at least having the exact same cars for all competitors. [1] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-drive/culture/commuting/nascars-golden-age-of-cheating/article4178760/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-drive/culture/commutin...
rascul 3y ago
> Game used to be about driving everyday civilian cars fast. Everyday civilian cars aren't anywhere near as safe as NASCAR race cars but some are likely faster and/or handle better.

Game used to be about driving everyday civilian cars fast. Now its about who can parse the rules the finest. It isn't "organizing" things that spoils them, its the organizers.

I_Am_Nous 3y ago

Eh, there has always been an amount of bending rules or capitalizing on design gaps in racing. NASCAR and Formula 1 have always had people adding things they shouldn't, from extra long, curly fuel pipes which can hold nearly an extra gallon in NASCAR to Ferrari using a secondary oil tank to add extra power by burning oil in F1. Or their special fuel pump which moved the regulated amount of fuel during the 32 times a second a sensor was verifying flow rate, but running it at max flow rate when the sensor wasn't polling. I don't like it anymore than you do, but it's not exactly a new issue.

Am4TIfIsER0ppos 3y ago
I saw Rush the other week (film about James Hunt and Nikki Lauda) and that reminded me that F1 used to have cars with 6 wheels to which I thought "take me back" even though that was before I was born. As an example in contrast today you have tires made as poorly as possible. Why shouldn't you have a gas guzzler if you think you can justify the weight of fuel, or the extra time cost of refueling? Refueling, do you remember that? I don't watch anymore after seeing how the sausage is made.
- I_Am_Nous 3y ago
  I'm too young to have seen any refueling races by the time I could watch F1, but I can agree with you that over-regulation seem to stifle innovation. Even if the innovation it stifles is "we put a w16 engine in a car just to see if it would work" (it didn't) it made for races you weren't totally sure who would even take part since there were more teams than grid slots, and qualifying actually had more excitement than just seeing who had pole. Did that quirky team with the experimental aero package make it into the race, or did the team with the heavier engine and worse braking make it? Regarding tires, the lack of refueling means they have to make some kind of choice to add strategic opportunity and forcing at least one tire change per race is about the only thing they can do. It's a lot more interesting to watch something like IMSA where a damaged car is put into the pit, a mechanic jumps on the bent hood to squash it back down, and then they put some sturdy duct tape on it to hold it down for the rest of the race. In F1 any damage means you won't get into the top 10, so you won't get points, so you may as well not even finish the race. Racing still needs to be a spectacle at some point, and I can only imagine being a fan who watched Senna in the wet back in the day, engine screaming, passes made with skill, and comparing it to a modern race where the engines are quiet and they had to add push to pass systems like DRS and the "add 160 horsepower" electric motors just to try to allow drivers to pass in the first place because the cars are so much larger than they used to be. I'll always be a motorsport fan but F1 kind of seems like a shell of what it could have been. I suppose this is where it "gets political" but the F1 regulations are also attempting to reduce the carbon footprint of the sport. A lofty and worthy goal, but I don't think the cars themselves make up the bulk of the carbon footprint - transporting the cars all around the world does. So how about we make the cars fun to watch again? Improve the carbon footprint of the transport, and don't restrict the cars to try to offset it. Just let the cars be cars! It feels like artificially limiting the amount of food you can feed a champion race horse just to say "We reduced grain dependence across the whole sport!"
  - bluecalm 3y ago
    The problem is that car racing is very boring if you allow engineers to go wild. For example using airflow to increase grip at some point gives advantage to the car in front. Pair that with powerful engine and there won't be any passing ever once that car is in front. Making fast, unpassable car is just to easy. Regulations are about crippling them enough to make racing interesting. If you have to do it anyway then why not add other lofty goals like driver's safety, efficiency, disallowing solutions that would drain everyone's budget etc.
    - withinboredom 3y ago
      That’s like saying once Usain Bolt was born, there’s no point in running any more. There may be a team always in front, but the simpler rule would be: once you make it, you are out for a season or two. That drives incentive to not be over-the-top winning unless you want a guaranteed one-and-done team.
    - NovemberWhiskey 3y ago
      >The problem is that car racing is very boring if you allow engineers to go wild. Or ridiculously dangerous. The cars are much less fast than they could be.
  - the_gipsy 3y ago
    I always thought some innovations in F1 are going back into the consumer market. So it would make sense to push for emission efficiency on the engineering side, regardless of the emissions due to the whole event logistics. With your horse analogy, imagine mixing in the champion's genes back into work horses. Probably a net win.
  - simion314 3y ago
    >So how about we make the cars fun to watch again? F1 can be very boring, the guys that were starting first were finishing first, I would watch it to see overtakes and piloting skills and the problem is that without limits the company with the big money will win. This is not fun, it does not make money and rules change to limit costs so all the teams can compete using a similar budget. I stopped watching 2 decades ago, I stopped also watching or reading the summaries, it got to boring for me but I suppose that there are soem that want to see that kind of sport where the teams have no limit and you just watch the cars running around in circles and admire them. I think there are only a few engines providers anyway , so I am not sure on what they are optimizing on this days, maybe aerodynamics and fuel strategy.
- arethuza 3y ago
  F1 has had lots of interesting things over the years - my favourite being the 1.5l 600HP V16 from the 1950s. Didn't work terribly well but worth listening to a recording of one because it sounded awesome - there are still a few running examples. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Racing_Motors_V16 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Racing_Motors_V16 Edit: BRM are sometimes referred to as "British Racing Misery"
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  >in contrast today you have tires made as poorly as possible That's not entirely true. F1 tires today are vastly grippier and stronger than they were in the James Hunt Nikki Lauda era because the downforces they need to withstand are also much stronger. Sure, by F1 regulations, Pirelli needs to intentionally make the upper layer of their tires have a short lifespan in order to make the race more exiting by forcing the team strategy to come to the pits more often when their tires wear out, instead of staying out the entire race on one set of tires, but you can't say the tires are made as poorly as possible. In fact the innovations in them are quite remarkable. They're intentionally not as hard wearing as the Michelins of the Michel Schumacher era but they're way grippier.
cjrp 3y ago
It feels like the rule-bending used to be more obvious (to the naked eye), like strapping a massive fan to the back of the car. Now it's extending some bodywork by a few millimetres, etc. It's still impressive, but there's less for the layman to see.
- I_Am_Nous 3y ago
  Or even the more boring stuff like "F1 team Racing Point's brake ducts look suspiciously similar to the brake ducts of the previous year Mercedes, which won the constructor cup..." because Mercedes was kind of the parent team to Racing Point and "shared" the design. I also remember Ferrari trying a new way to attach mirrors, which was deemed illegal, but it shows how tiny the gains they chase are.
  - persnickety 3y ago
    What is the rule violation with the brakes? Is it not allowed to reuse designs from elsewhere?
    - Kubuxu 3y ago
      Some components of the car can be shared, others have to be shared, but break ducts IIRC are in the third category where you have to design them yourself.
lostlogin 3y ago
> there has always been an amount of bending rules or capitalizing on design gaps in racing. The America’s Cup, (yacht racing) is another good example of this. Half the competition is in the court room, which isn’t that interesting from my point of view. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/America%27s_Cup https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/America%27s_Cup

itomato 3y ago

Welcome to racing. It never was simply about "driving civilian cars fast", it was about skirting rules, in this case, alcohol prohibition. They were always modified to be faster and to hide booze. From day one.

fragmede 3y ago
Racing predates prohibition, and even cars. Ever since humans could move on two feet there have been contests to see who can go faster. Hell, the origin of racing even predates humans, where the deer that could run faster than the wolf got to survive. Thus young animals race just to develop survival skills. Car racing then, is as old as cars, the first of which came out in 1885, by Mr. Benz. The first recognized car race was in 1890's France, before gangsters were racing cops during prohibition, which started in 1919. Nascar got its start where you state, but racing is bigger and started earlier than Nascar.
lotsofpulp 3y ago
Why is that relevant 100 years after prohibition ended?
- rascul 3y ago
  It's not really, except historically. The early stock car racing drivers in the USA were often bootleggers who transported illegal liquor so had fast cars to run from the police. Eventually they organized and that led to the forming of NASCAR.

rags2riches 3y ago

Folk racing has an interesting rule: > Anyone can place a fixed-price bid on any car, and the buyer is then chosen by draw. The fixed price in Finland is €2,000 (≈US$1,650) or 8,000 SEK (≈US$1,000) in Sweden. Refusing to sell is grounds for having one's competition licence revoked https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folkrace https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folkrace

fragmede 3y ago
24 hours of LeMons has (had?) a similar rule. All cars must cost $500, and to help enforce that, they have a claiming rule, where after a race, organizers can buy any car from a team for $500.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago
  The claiming rule won't enforce the racing rule. All it does is limit the value of the car to "the value of winning the race, plus $500".
  - geon 3y ago
    The value of winning LeMons is zero, so...
    - thaumasiotes 3y ago
      In that case, there's no need to enforce any rules! The cost of cheating already exceeds any potential benefits.
      - fragmede 3y ago
        > BS Factor: To prevent cheating, all cars will be inspected by a panel appointed by the Organizers. At that time, all teams will be given an opportunity to describe the car’s purchase and prep. If the panel believes the limit set out in Rule 4.1 has been exceeded, it will assign a Bullshit Factor (BSF) equal to one BSF per $10 above the limit. The entry will be docked one lap for each BSF assigned. (Ten dollars = one BSF = one lap.) Entrants are very, very, exceedingly strongly encouraged to bring pre-race-prep photographs, verifiable receipts, notarized testimonials, plus any and all other supporting evidence to Tech/BS Inspection. Or at least make up plausible-sounding stories in advance. https://24hoursoflemons.com/prices-rules/#vehicle-price https://24hoursoflemons.com/prices-rules/#vehicle-price

Gualdrapo 3y ago

Many argue the same principle is being applied to professional cycling.

damontal 3y ago
I remember reading that even in early Tours de France riders would surreptitiously jump into a car to get ahead in the race.

keiferski 3y ago

This is one reason why I like keirin, Japanese bicycle racing. Everyone has to use the same old steel frame bikes, there is no contact with the outside world (for riders) before races, and the uniform colors are randomly selected. The funny part is that keirin is one of the few sports in Japan that people can bet on (with large prizes for winners, too), so the mere inclusion of gambling doesn't necessarily mean bad outcomes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keirin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keirin

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

Fradow 3y ago

"used to be"? When is that? There are lots of very interesting old stories about rule bending in Nascar. Actually, it apparently started from the very first official Nascar race [1]. If you want racing series about driving civilian cars fast, they do exist. Nascar just isn't one of them. The only one I really heard about is "Stock Miata" racing, but I'm sure there are other series using stock street cars, or at least having the exact same cars for all competitors. [1] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-drive/culture/commuting/nascars-golden-age-of-cheating/article4178760/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-drive/culture/commutin...

rascul 3y ago

> Game used to be about driving everyday civilian cars fast. Everyday civilian cars aren't anywhere near as safe as NASCAR race cars but some are likely faster and/or handle better.