5 ms·

What I want to see is not heroic drivers like NASCAR, nor heroic billionaires investing in very similar tweaks, like Formula 1, but a diversity of creative conc

by mapt 12y ago

What I want to see is not heroic drivers like NASCAR, nor heroic billionaires investing in very similar tweaks, like Formula 1, but a diversity of creative conceptual engineering, competing in the same challenges, for lots of money. Things like DARPA sponsors: The Grand Challenge in self-driving cars, and the Robotics Challenge. The Ansari X-prize also applies. BattleBots was a decent attempt at a sport along these lines. Fields where true novelty still exists, and there are no consistently obvious paths forward. My impression as a non-fan is that Formula 1 only achieves divergent innovation on rare occasions, and next season or two everyone is doing it or it's been banned by the race sponsors.

f055 12y ago
You are spot-on! At the moment, F1 has little diversity and lots of restricting regulations. Formula-E is even worse, with everyone driving the same cars. NASCAR, or Indy, is not better either. All the revolution and innovation is in WEC (World Endurance Championship), it's the one with the Le Mans round. This year, 4 strong competitors arrive in the top class and this is the series to watch http://www.carmagazine.co.uk/car-news/first-official-pictures/toyota/contenders-ready-porsche-and-toyotas-2015-le-mans-racers-revealed/ http://www.carmagazine.co.uk/car-news/first-official-picture...
- daphreak 12y ago
  Everyone is driving the same car only for the first season. Second season they are opening up the motor and inverter for improvement and modification. In the third it sounds like the battery will be opened up as well. My guess is that they want to keep things as competitive as possible between the drivers. Slowly opening up the playing field for modifications will keep the races interesting but still foster innovation (at least for the first few years).
  - gsnedders 12y ago
    The main aim with the limited number of allowed modifications is to keep the cost of entry low, such that the brand new championship actually gets entrants. It's hard to justify a large budget for an unheard of championship.
    - f055 12y ago
      I was really excited for FE, but at the moment is too like gokarts for me. But if your predictions come true, and they open up everything, I would really like FE to become as crazy as the innovative F1 years of 70s, 80s and early 90s - where just the speed and winning mattered, without the carbon and safety levels ruining the sport...
      - vl 12y ago
        >too like gokarts for me. But even Formula 1 is essentially pimped-up shifter gokart.
        f055 12y ago
        Thanks to too restrictive regulations. I miss the times of four-front-wheelers, gas turbines and vacuum-undercarriage.
- proveanegative 12y ago
  >At the moment, F1 has little diversity and lots of restricting regulations. What would Formula 1 look like today with no restrictions beyond basic driver safety?
  - makeitsuckless 12y ago
    It would consist of just two or three remaining teams being able to raise the funds to compete... Or in other words, it would no longer exists, because the public would lose interest in the lack of competition.
    - f055 12y ago
      The funding cap currently in place makes sense, but the extremely restrictive construction rules don't. Some public, including me, lost interest anyway a few seasons ago. I would love to see F1 with say $50M max season budget and no rules :)
Gracana 12y ago
There's a lot of interesting variety in the world of land speed racing. Just take a look at this [1] spike-tired jet turbine motorcycle. You won't see that at the track! [1] http://www.landracing.com/index.php/2-news-and-articles/news/408-anders-johansson-s-turbine-bike-at-speedweekend-on-ice http://www.landracing.com/index.php/2-news-and-articles/news...
- swimfar 12y ago
  For anyone that's interested in creative engineering in motorsports I'd definitely recommend trying to make it out to the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah for one of their speed trials [1]. It's an amazing experience. You'll see everything from multi-$100k vehicles with huge corporate/university support down to a guy who put something together in his shed four a couple grand (and he may still get a record). Some people go to try to break official records, others to break personal records, and others just to have fun. There are lots of different categories so almost anything you would want to make/modify can be brought out there as long as it's safe. Go to one that has both motorcycles and cars to see the best diversity(Speed Week, in August, is what I'd recommend). Another cool thing is how close you are to the vehicles. You can be 20 feet away when the 2000hp streamliner takes off. (Although they aren't dragsters, so the acceleration isn't what's important). And most of the people love talking about what they built. So when they're waiting in line you can get right up to the cars and ask questions about stuff (just don't bother them if they look like they're in a hurry to fix/modify something ;) ). You'll see extremely well engineered vehicles using established ideas for going fast as well as crazy ideas that may or may not work (e.g. a v-twin converted into a single cylinder which uses the second cylinder as a supercharger.) Often times it's not even about trying to go faster, it's just about trying something new or challenging. Anyone into cars and motorcycles should go at least once if they can. For many people, after their first experience they decide they need to bring something to run next year, and that's when the addiction starts. :) [1] http://www.scta-bni.org/ http://www.scta-bni.org/
Old_Thrashbarg 12y ago
Definitely, this is a huge opportunity for innovation if they would open it up. I would like to see there be no rules on the cars except that they must weigh in under a certain number.
- brownbat 12y ago
  We did something like this for a while. We quickly learned that we are more than capable of building machines that reliably kill their drivers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_B http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_B Maybe self driving or drive by wire cars would lead to a revival, it really was racing unleashed.
  - mapt 12y ago
    Does it make me a bad person that I don't care that much? Because for me, the drivers are mere formalities - the engineering is the thing. The game-theoretical penalty for losing a driver is losing the race, and casting a dour outlook on sponsors, aside from the emotional component of losing a team member. If that proves insufficient, you can raise this disincentive with fines and deposits, without imposing any hard limits on the tech. Risk and dedication in the face of physical injury is a very substantial component of professional sports. Essentially every boxer and many/most football & hockey players enjoy the benefits of repeated traumatic brain injury. Olympians sacrifice large chunks of their lives to developing the physique and reflexes necessary to win - quitting doesn't get the first quarter of their lifespan spent rigorously training back. Some of our most celebrated sports are devoted to violent confrontational combat, like MMA, with every injury possibility that entails, and we have turned the simulation/infliction of injuries into a billion-dollar soap opera in WWE (go watch 'The Wrestler'). Nobody wants to go back to gladiatorial bloodsports where ten men enter and one survives per round, but we are more than willing to sacrifice a lot of the lives of the participants for the sake of the sport, no matter how much we like to pretend otherwise. It is monetarily impossible to go through so much driver flesh when the races cost millions of dollars to enter. The direct veneration of bodily sacrifice to the act of winning is something that draws audiences by the billions, even if it's not to my taste generally - but a sport which shows me what I want to see (the human mind at its best rather than the human body at its best) at the expense of modest risk factors isn't such a turnoff.
hengheng 12y ago
Vln does this to a certain degree. They have diesel cars competing with petrol driven ones, they had the crazy delta setup with a narrow front, and now the brilliant front-wheel drive front engine setup with electrical assist on the rear.
makeitsuckless 12y ago
Because outside the US, car racing is a very serious sport in which manufacturers pour millions. Opening up the regulations would make it prohibitively expensive. As it is, there are very few teams able to compete in the few remaining manufacturer series like WEC and F1.
ryguytilidie 12y ago
Sounds like you would love the World Endurance Challenge! They have, I believe, 6 different classes (I think DHH races in GT-Amateur) as well as an experimental car, often a deltawing, that races with the field. All 6 classes have a ton of innovation and a ton of variety. The top class contains both an 8 cylinder toyota and a 4 cylinder porsche. I've been an F1 fan for awhile and have really been loving WEC lately.

by mapt 12y ago

f055 12y ago

You are spot-on! At the moment, F1 has little diversity and lots of restricting regulations. Formula-E is even worse, with everyone driving the same cars. NASCAR, or Indy, is not better either. All the revolution and innovation is in WEC (World Endurance Championship), it's the one with the Le Mans round. This year, 4 strong competitors arrive in the top class and this is the series to watch http://www.carmagazine.co.uk/car-news/first-official-pictures/toyota/contenders-ready-porsche-and-toyotas-2015-le-mans-racers-revealed/ http://www.carmagazine.co.uk/car-news/first-official-picture...

daphreak 12y ago
Everyone is driving the same car only for the first season. Second season they are opening up the motor and inverter for improvement and modification. In the third it sounds like the battery will be opened up as well. My guess is that they want to keep things as competitive as possible between the drivers. Slowly opening up the playing field for modifications will keep the races interesting but still foster innovation (at least for the first few years).
- gsnedders 12y ago
  The main aim with the limited number of allowed modifications is to keep the cost of entry low, such that the brand new championship actually gets entrants. It's hard to justify a large budget for an unheard of championship.
  - f055 12y ago
    I was really excited for FE, but at the moment is too like gokarts for me. But if your predictions come true, and they open up everything, I would really like FE to become as crazy as the innovative F1 years of 70s, 80s and early 90s - where just the speed and winning mattered, without the carbon and safety levels ruining the sport...
    - vl 12y ago
      >too like gokarts for me. But even Formula 1 is essentially pimped-up shifter gokart.
      - f055 12y ago
        Thanks to too restrictive regulations. I miss the times of four-front-wheelers, gas turbines and vacuum-undercarriage.
proveanegative 12y ago
>At the moment, F1 has little diversity and lots of restricting regulations. What would Formula 1 look like today with no restrictions beyond basic driver safety?
- makeitsuckless 12y ago
  It would consist of just two or three remaining teams being able to raise the funds to compete... Or in other words, it would no longer exists, because the public would lose interest in the lack of competition.
  - f055 12y ago
    The funding cap currently in place makes sense, but the extremely restrictive construction rules don't. Some public, including me, lost interest anyway a few seasons ago. I would love to see F1 with say $50M max season budget and no rules :)

Gracana 12y ago

There's a lot of interesting variety in the world of land speed racing. Just take a look at this [1] spike-tired jet turbine motorcycle. You won't see that at the track! [1] http://www.landracing.com/index.php/2-news-and-articles/news/408-anders-johansson-s-turbine-bike-at-speedweekend-on-ice http://www.landracing.com/index.php/2-news-and-articles/news...

swimfar 12y ago
For anyone that's interested in creative engineering in motorsports I'd definitely recommend trying to make it out to the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah for one of their speed trials [1]. It's an amazing experience. You'll see everything from multi-$100k vehicles with huge corporate/university support down to a guy who put something together in his shed four a couple grand (and he may still get a record). Some people go to try to break official records, others to break personal records, and others just to have fun. There are lots of different categories so almost anything you would want to make/modify can be brought out there as long as it's safe. Go to one that has both motorcycles and cars to see the best diversity(Speed Week, in August, is what I'd recommend). Another cool thing is how close you are to the vehicles. You can be 20 feet away when the 2000hp streamliner takes off. (Although they aren't dragsters, so the acceleration isn't what's important). And most of the people love talking about what they built. So when they're waiting in line you can get right up to the cars and ask questions about stuff (just don't bother them if they look like they're in a hurry to fix/modify something ;) ). You'll see extremely well engineered vehicles using established ideas for going fast as well as crazy ideas that may or may not work (e.g. a v-twin converted into a single cylinder which uses the second cylinder as a supercharger.) Often times it's not even about trying to go faster, it's just about trying something new or challenging. Anyone into cars and motorcycles should go at least once if they can. For many people, after their first experience they decide they need to bring something to run next year, and that's when the addiction starts. :) [1] http://www.scta-bni.org/ http://www.scta-bni.org/

Old_Thrashbarg 12y ago

Definitely, this is a huge opportunity for innovation if they would open it up. I would like to see there be no rules on the cars except that they must weigh in under a certain number.

brownbat 12y ago
We did something like this for a while. We quickly learned that we are more than capable of building machines that reliably kill their drivers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_B http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_B Maybe self driving or drive by wire cars would lead to a revival, it really was racing unleashed.
- mapt 12y ago
  Does it make me a bad person that I don't care that much? Because for me, the drivers are mere formalities - the engineering is the thing. The game-theoretical penalty for losing a driver is losing the race, and casting a dour outlook on sponsors, aside from the emotional component of losing a team member. If that proves insufficient, you can raise this disincentive with fines and deposits, without imposing any hard limits on the tech. Risk and dedication in the face of physical injury is a very substantial component of professional sports. Essentially every boxer and many/most football & hockey players enjoy the benefits of repeated traumatic brain injury. Olympians sacrifice large chunks of their lives to developing the physique and reflexes necessary to win - quitting doesn't get the first quarter of their lifespan spent rigorously training back. Some of our most celebrated sports are devoted to violent confrontational combat, like MMA, with every injury possibility that entails, and we have turned the simulation/infliction of injuries into a billion-dollar soap opera in WWE (go watch 'The Wrestler'). Nobody wants to go back to gladiatorial bloodsports where ten men enter and one survives per round, but we are more than willing to sacrifice a lot of the lives of the participants for the sake of the sport, no matter how much we like to pretend otherwise. It is monetarily impossible to go through so much driver flesh when the races cost millions of dollars to enter. The direct veneration of bodily sacrifice to the act of winning is something that draws audiences by the billions, even if it's not to my taste generally - but a sport which shows me what I want to see (the human mind at its best rather than the human body at its best) at the expense of modest risk factors isn't such a turnoff.

hengheng 12y ago

Vln does this to a certain degree. They have diesel cars competing with petrol driven ones, they had the crazy delta setup with a narrow front, and now the brilliant front-wheel drive front engine setup with electrical assist on the rear.

makeitsuckless 12y ago

Because outside the US, car racing is a very serious sport in which manufacturers pour millions. Opening up the regulations would make it prohibitively expensive. As it is, there are very few teams able to compete in the few remaining manufacturer series like WEC and F1.

ryguytilidie 12y ago

Sounds like you would love the World Endurance Challenge! They have, I believe, 6 different classes (I think DHH races in GT-Amateur) as well as an experimental car, often a deltawing, that races with the field. All 6 classes have a ton of innovation and a ton of variety. The top class contains both an 8 cylinder toyota and a 4 cylinder porsche. I've been an F1 fan for awhile and have really been loving WEC lately.