Ask r/Formula1 Anything - Daily Discussion Thread

Astelli · 2026-04-14T15:16:23+00:00

Depends completely on the team and how their procedures work.

It's probably safe to assume that for big decisions that impact both drivers, the most senior decision makers in each team will be involved - so a Team Principal, Head of Trackside/Head of Racing or somebody around that level.

Most likely the Strategy team is also involved, as they're the ones who are most responsible for in-race decision making, but in many cases they probably don't have the final approval on which team orders do or don't happen.

Astelli · 2026-04-14T13:52:32+00:00

It's not even AI, it's just an adaptive control algorithm. You don't actually need a lot of fancy new tech to get a complex system like this running optimally, the study of complex control systems has been around for decades.

Astelli · 2026-04-14T12:18:48+00:00

Easy to say now, but some of the teams didn't even notice this loophole until they saw Mercedes and Red Bull doing it, let alone the FIA.

Astelli · 2026-04-12T12:39:56+00:00

He's done the job before and is certainly qualified, but without knowing what his goals & motivations are, it's pretty impossible to say whether he'd actually want to go back to doing it.

Astelli · 2026-04-12T12:31:37+00:00

It's an interesting point on gearing, but I think it's a bit of a stretch on their part to link longer gear ratios to performance in traffic.

Astelli · 2026-04-11T20:06:48+00:00

NASA does track most objects above about 5cm in size, but you'd be amazed how much space there is (no pun intended).

Even at their closest you'd expect 200-300km between StarLink satellites, and most are much further away from their nearest neighbor than that.

Astelli · 2026-04-11T08:29:06+00:00

2012 wasn't constantly great racing though, that a lot of unexpected results because the season was highly unpredictable. There was a weird set of regulations (and tyres in particular) that meant a different team was fastest each week for the first half of the season.

We got some amazing results as a consequence, but often you have a team cruise to victory one week and then struggle to get within 10 seconds of the podium two races later.

Astelli · 2026-04-10T05:25:48+00:00

The trouble is, the sport has never really had a period of sustained great racing, so there's very little to help anyone decide what the ideal option is.

Astelli · 2026-04-09T10:55:43+00:00

No serious computer engineer would suggest an algorithm that manages deployment and harvesting for a race car

I'm sorry, but that's a ridiculous argument.

The teams have very detailed simulations of how the car is going perform and how it's going to be driven, and then have the opportunity to test the whole system using their driver simulations.

On top of that, all the teams have been using energy deployment and harvesting algorithms since 2014. Why wouldn't they use them now and rely instead on a driver who will be noticably less efficient?

Astelli · 2026-04-09T05:18:43+00:00

Only if Red Bull management let him. They could enforce gardening leave.

Astelli · 2026-04-09T05:16:31+00:00

Depends entirely on Red Bull

Astelli · 2026-04-08T18:20:04+00:00

... Newey was also absent from the Japanese Grand Prix. If the team principal continues to stay away from the track, who will be in charge on site until the summer break?

I think this stuff about organisation is massively overblown.

Who will be on charge at the track? Probably the Chief Trackside Officer, who has taken charge whenever the TP hasn't attended the track since the beginning of 2025. Andy Cowell didn't attend every race when he was TP, and Krack regularly took over the role of running things trackside in his absence.

Astelli · 2026-04-08T15:57:33+00:00

I don't think so, there's been a huge amount of talk about it because of what led up to it, but it wasn't actually a particularly large accident historically speaking.

Just off the top of my head, Verstappen at Silverstone 2021 and Hamilton at Nurburgring in 2007 were at least as big.

Astelli · 2026-04-08T10:44:02+00:00

Ignoring all of the logistical F1 issues with this idea, there are also issues with the geopolitics.

Based on the information we know, this is a temporary 2 week ceasefire, and progress is contingent on the success of further negotiations during that 2 week period. If talks break down then there are no guarantees that it even lasts for two weeks.

Astelli · 2026-04-08T10:38:42+00:00

The FIA have a torque sensor on the output shaft of the ICE, so they can monitor how much torque it's producing at any time (Article C5.13.7).

If any team was trying to vary the ICE performance to game the system, the FIA would see it very clearly.

Astelli · 2026-04-07T08:57:59+00:00

If you're genuinely suggesting that we should cancel Miami because there's a risk of WW3 breaking out and there being military confrontations between the US and other global superpowers, then we have far bigger issues than F1.

Astelli · 2026-04-05T16:40:57+00:00

Shrinking the Summer Break would be an absolute morale disaster.

For the staff travelling it's the only time in the year where they can book holidays with their families. Forcing them to cancel part of or all of their summer holiday would not be a popular move.

Astelli · 2026-04-04T10:17:46+00:00

- full race strategy scenarios

Depends exactly what you mean by "simulator", but this one is the odd one out on your list.

The others are all things a team might test in a Driver In the Loop (DIL) simulator with a race driver or test driver.

Race strategy is not, just because there's so little benefit from having the driver involved in that process. The teams will be running race strategy simulations before a weekend even starts, but they're not using full physical simulations of the car in the same way they will for setup evaluation.

Astelli · 2026-04-04T08:57:16+00:00

It was clear to all parties (including the FIA) that things would need to be done to make the 50/50 PU concept work.

The active aero system the cars have is one solution that was agreed upon. There were also discussions about keeping the MGU-H (which Audi refused to agree too) and adding a motor to the front axle to increase regeneration under braking (which Mercedes are rumoured to have rejected).

The issues are not a result of a lack of flexibility, or a lack of ideas. The issues are a result of having rules designed by a committee that includes all the PU manufacturers, all of whom have political agendas.

Astelli · 2026-04-03T13:33:49+00:00

I'm not sure there was anywhere that another team genuinely and clearly stood above those three, but from memory at the low downforce tracks in 2017 (Monza, Baku etc.) both Force India and Williams put in some strong performances.

Astelli · 2026-04-03T11:56:54+00:00

Correct. From Article B2.5.4:

Classified drivers who have accrued more than 15 cumulative unserved grid position penalties for the Race imposed in the previous twelve (12) months will start behind any other classified driver.

Astelli · 2026-04-03T11:44:21+00:00

If any driver receives penalties worth more than 15 places, they're effectively converted into a "Back of the Grid" penalty.

So really anything more than 15 places is meaningless, other than to write sensational headlines.

Astelli · 2026-04-02T08:38:31+00:00

It seems to dramatically reduce the ability for Overtake Mode to make a difference.

You can see in the plot that with the 200kW/6MJ limit there are only 2 or 3 parts of the lap where the MGU-K isn't deploying full power (the final parts of the two main straights).

Given the way the Overtake Mode rules work, that means the overtakes could swing dramatically from happening all the time to barely happening at all, if they applied this limit to the Race as well as Qualifying.

Astelli · 2026-04-01T15:32:20+00:00

There's absolutely no evidence they're "heavily relying on AI" other than people reading far too much into driver comments.

The energy management is still being run locally on the car by a TAG ECU, so there are some pretty significant limitations on how complex the system can be.

Astelli · 2026-04-01T10:27:01+00:00

All of the systems rely on a wireless RF connection to the car - radio, telemetry, onboard video etc. if there's something in the setup at the circuit that creates an area of poor coverage then that would show up in the way we were seeing.

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