[CMOTD]

Returning to the theme, both F1 and NASCAR have introduced radical changes to the cars this year so here is a look at how the respective disciplines approached the task.

F1
They decided to reintroduce underbody downforce with the aim of allowing cars to follow each other more closely and hopefully produce better racing.
The new rules were written and the teams were given a year to design the cars with no testing until a month before the first race and very little subsequent opportunity to fix any problems. Result - Red Bull gets it right, Ferrari nearly gets it while the rest of the field bounce up and down like space hoppers and are seriously risking the long term health of their drivers. As the season progresses only two teams and three drivers have won a race, Ferrari have indulged their long standing habit of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory and the rest of the field are miles behind. They really might as well give Max the championship trophy now and save themselves the expense of flying round the world to the rest of the races.

NASCAR
Similarly they went for more underbody downforce plus some technical changes to spice things up. Their cars have always been able to follow each other very closely but had a tendency to stall out when side by side so they were attempting to eliminate this. Cost reduction was also an aim.

They started to work on the concept in late 2019 by commissioning prototype chassis with a generic body from Richard Childress Racing. These were given to various teams to try out on different tracks during 2020, provide feedback and adjust things as necessary.

In early 2021 NASCAR announced they were satisfied with progress so far, Ford, Chevy and Toyota were asked to produce definitive prototypes which were then thoroughly tested throughout the year on all types of tracks from short ovals to super speedways and road courses. A few more things were adjusted and the new generation was ready to go for the start of the 2022 season.

Instead of jumping in feet first, the initial race of the year was a non championship, three part race as a try out before the season started in earnest at Daytona. All went well and the gen 7 car was up and running. There have been a few teething problems to sort out along the way and the drivers find them a challenge but are generally in favour, the fans like them and the racing is as good as ever.

16 races down and there have been 12 different winners with four drivers winning their first ever cup race. A relatively new team, Trackhouse Racing, has managed three wins against the might of the top teams.

Could F1 learn a few things from NASCAR? Too right they could.

[Gpa113]

Very well put together summary. 

As usual Formula 1 is its own worst enemy.   Not content with the shambles of last years finale, and all the bad exposure it received,  the teams had barely any real testing to get this years new specification cars properly sorted, or even made properly safe in some instances.   As a brand  it has everything,  but in so many respects it has nothing.  Especially compared to the NASCAR set up.

[Kevan]

F1 (like certain English football clubs) lives on it's past instead of creating a new future.

A lot could be done to 'fix' it but I can hear the screaming hoardes now so it won't happen.

[autoavia]

The approach taken by NASCAR worked because there were only 3 manufacturers involved and the aim appears to have been to pretty much equalise the performance of the cars between the 3 manufacturers.

 In F1 you have every team going their own way to find an advantage. No one is the least bit interested in equalising the performance of the cars so the same approach just wasn't applicable BUT the teams should have been given more track time to sort out the cars for the new regulations.

 F1 wanted to restrict budgets to make things easier for the lower funded teams and I understand that among the cost cutting measures are a limit on track testing time and a limit on the max speed that could be generated in wind tunnel tests but apparently the max speed allowed is too low to show up the porpoising problems so wind tunnel tests don't help to provide a fix and teams don't have track time to sort it out so how is the problem ever going to be resolved?

 One thing that I really don't understand is why the teams seem so surprised that there is a porpoising problem. The Arrows A2 showed exactly the same trait over 40 years ago and made Jochen Mass and Riccardo Patrese feel very seasick. Arrows identified the cause of the problem but were never really able to find a satisfactory solution. The only way ground effect cars really worked way back then was when active suspension came along which is banned under current rules partly as another cost cutting measure.

 History has repeated itself but many now believe that you can't learn anything from history so I can only assume that very few in F1 looked back to see what happened the last time ground effect cars ran. Great idea to allow the cars to run closer together to provide more overtaking but unfortunately something in the way the rules were written is flawed.

[Kevan]

Meanwhile, Mr. 'Ground Effects' Newey's car is handling quite nicely thank you.

[CMOTD]

The approach taken by NASCAR worked because there were only 3 manufacturers involved and the aim appears to have been to pretty much equalise the performance of the cars between the 3 manufacturers.
 

Very true and NASCAR is all the better for it. However, the general approach is the right one, before everybody spends umpty millions on a radical new car then the sanctioning body pays to test out the basic principles of the proposed rules. F1 could have commissioned a spec car with the new underbody to test the rules before finalising things and their failure to allow any significant testing was sheer lunacy.

Adrian Newey has certainly done the best job but the Red Bull cars also bounce as Perez has admitted, just not as badly as the others.

BTCC has also successfully introduced a new hybrid system this year and they followed the same route as NASCAR. Speedworks and Cosworth were commissioned to build a prototype car which was extensively tested for over a year and even tried out in race conditions last September.

[JasonB]

Part of the attraction of F1 is the combination of bizarre decisions, political manoeuvering, power games both in and out of the car, the ridiculous sums of money involved, the incomprehensible levels of technology, the bickering, the difficulty in overtaking, the outrageous brain power of the best designers, and of course the sheer speed of those machines, and the skills of the the drivers on a proper track.

For the sake of those of us who enjoy F1, please don't spoil it for us with your ridiculous expectations of it suddenly becoming sensible, or even worse, some sort of spec series. Shudder.

F1 has a far more important issue right now, which is that it has American owners.  

No hold on there's more, it's not the fact that they're American that I object to. What troubles me is that they are accelerating the move away from the historic circuits towards boring tracks with little history, but plenty of celebrities, and plenty of money. I know Bernie started the process, and I wasn't keen on it then either. But I think the pandemic has masked the intentions of F1's current owners by forcing them into using interesting and historic tracks like Imola, Portimao, and Nurburgring.

They were a breath of fresh air and a fantastic addition to the F1 calendar, but they will inevitably be dumped, and even Monaco and, God forbid, Spa Francorchamps, are rumoured to be under threat. If they wanted to break into the American market, then why not use Watkins Glen, or Laguna Seca, rather than the celebrity fest that was Miami? That was a rhetorical question, by the way, as we all know the answer.

Anyway, getting back to the original question, can F1 learn anything from NASCAR?

In a word, NO!

Did Lionel Messi learn anything from Sunday League football? Could Usain Bolt learn anything from a cheese rolling competition?

No, Formula One has to retain it's own unique form of madness, not try to follow anybody else's particular form of being bonkers.

Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe NASCAR is based in just North America, and has struggled in recent years with dwindling audiences.

F1 on the other hand is an international series, and the audience dwarfs that of NASCAR.

The world is chock-a-block with very entertaining motorsports series, most of which have loads of overtaking, because they are designed that way, and good luck to all of them. I love going up to my local track to watch the Autograss racing, it's great.

But F1 is very different and I sincerely hope it stays that way. Overtaking is supposed to be a titanic struggle in F1, otherwise why would we still remember and celebrate the best of them like Mansell double bluffing Piquet in 1987? If that was easy to do, and happened every lap, none of us would really remember it.

I think F1 is the big, swanky drama queen of the motorsports world, with more money, more technical prowess, and an endless ability to create mountains out of molehills. Personally I'd rather it stayed that way, and retained it's own unique identity, rather than trying to copy anything else. It is not only top of the pile, but it's also unique in many respects. It's something to celebrate, for all its faults, unless you want to homogonise everything by insisting that every motorsport mandate equal cars, equal engine, equal performance, minimum number of overtakes, and minimum weight of driver's underpants.

Nah, let's have just one series where it's not all equalised out, where the big boys all bring the full weight of their organisations to the game and all bring something different, and where, if you haven't got it right you'll suffer, not just for a few races, but possibly over years.

Let's hold onto and value that series that allowed Fangio, Clark, Hill, Stewart, Schumacher, Vettel, and Hamilton to show their dominance, and the teams that they drove for to express their power. It's not supposed to be a game, it's not supposed to be equalised, or homogenised, or fair. The aim of motorsport has always been total domination, and that's particularly true in F1. 

Embrace the madness of F1, or forget it.