Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Le Tour de F1
I've never particularly noticed le Tour de France before. Obviously this year, starting as it did in London, there's been a lot more publicity than usual. It also happened that as F1 was engaged in a spy scandal, so cycling was in controversy over doping. The two stories were compared, and run adjacent to each other, in many news programmes.
So, I became interested in how it worked. There are 20 stages, much like there are roughly 20 races. The winner is the person who, on average, does the best. He doesn't have to win every stage, or even the most amount of stages. It rewards consistency. However, the main difference is that there are no points - the winner wins on the amount of time it takes him to complete the whole Tour. For example, this year's champion, Alberto Contador, took 91 hours and 26 seconds. Could we apply this to F1? Could the winner be the driver who took the least time over the season? This way drivers would no longer 'settle for second' and drop back off the leader. They'd push to get as close as possible and minimise the time loss. Conserving engines, and team orders after the second pit-stop, would all go out the window. The only drawback, I can see, is what do you do when a driver fails to finish a race? What time is he given?
So, I became interested in how it worked. There are 20 stages, much like there are roughly 20 races. The winner is the person who, on average, does the best. He doesn't have to win every stage, or even the most amount of stages. It rewards consistency. However, the main difference is that there are no points - the winner wins on the amount of time it takes him to complete the whole Tour. For example, this year's champion, Alberto Contador, took 91 hours and 26 seconds. Could we apply this to F1? Could the winner be the driver who took the least time over the season? This way drivers would no longer 'settle for second' and drop back off the leader. They'd push to get as close as possible and minimise the time loss. Conserving engines, and team orders after the second pit-stop, would all go out the window. The only drawback, I can see, is what do you do when a driver fails to finish a race? What time is he given?
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Give him the speed of the slowest driver over the line plus a second for every lap not completed?
All of this is very interesting, but I wonder if it wouldn't seem insanely complicated. I was explaining to Adrian that until recently the restarts were handled by aggregate timing. So in that case during the European Grand Prix you would have been faced by the leader of the race being actually in 5 place on the track. Obviously your system isn't quite as mad as that but it might seem a bit arbitrary, especially for those who don't finish. Rather like the Duckworth-Lewis method in cricket.
By the by I believe that, and I'm going to go and have to look it up at home, that there is a direct heretage connection between the founding of the Tour de France and Formula 1. It's something to do with L'Auto and Henri Desgrange
All of this is very interesting, but I wonder if it wouldn't seem insanely complicated. I was explaining to Adrian that until recently the restarts were handled by aggregate timing. So in that case during the European Grand Prix you would have been faced by the leader of the race being actually in 5 place on the track. Obviously your system isn't quite as mad as that but it might seem a bit arbitrary, especially for those who don't finish. Rather like the Duckworth-Lewis method in cricket.
By the by I believe that, and I'm going to go and have to look it up at home, that there is a direct heretage connection between the founding of the Tour de France and Formula 1. It's something to do with L'Auto and Henri Desgrange
I don't think it would be that complicated - after all the Tour does it fine. It helps if you present it like this: 'We go into Hungary this weekend, Hamilton leading the championship with Alonso 43 seconds behind'.
You can see the gap on the track, and drivers would push right up until the line to gain any seconds they can on each other.
Another problem, though, is that it would mean very little to all the other teams - until the end of the year. They like getting points now and then.
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You can see the gap on the track, and drivers would push right up until the line to gain any seconds they can on each other.
Another problem, though, is that it would mean very little to all the other teams - until the end of the year. They like getting points now and then.
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