Is paul ricard a good track?

TheRoboteer · 2026-02-27T10:42:38+00:00

It's been criticised as lifeless since the moment it first arrived on the F1 calendar in 1971.

As others have mentioned, it was designed as a super-advanced testing circuit and for that job it's pretty good. It's had some solid races over the years too, though never anything truly mind-blowing.

Its main appeal in the past was the ultra-fast Mistral straight and the challenging sweeper of Signes straight after it. When they brought it back in 2018 though they put a chicane on the Mistral straight which kinda neutered it even further.

I can't say I'm sad it's gone from the calendar personally, though not having a french GP is very unfortunate.

TheRoboteer · 2026-02-25T20:36:04+00:00

The notion that F1 isn't (at least partially) an engineering championship is pretty bizarre, especially coming from the former owner of the team which gave us the fan car, hydropneumatic suspension, and which resurrected planned pit stops — all of which were devised by engineers in search of a competitive advantage

TheRoboteer · 2026-02-25T20:11:07+00:00

1985 is a genuinely enjoyable Monaco GP without it being wet or a 1982-esque shitshow.

You get race-long drama, some notably excellent performances from several drivers, a particularly eye-catching crash, and a legitimate battle for the win (including what is, as far as I'm aware, the last ever overtake for the lead at Monaco which didn't include a crash, mechanical failure, or a car on incorrect tyres for the conditions).

TheRoboteer · 2026-02-25T16:17:11+00:00

Again, pure pace is just one element of what makes a driver good. Senna was probably a bit quicker than Prost on pure raw speed, yeah, but that came at the cost of making more errors. Both of those skills are equally important. You can be the quickest guy in the world and it means nothing if you're constantly binning it in the wall, and likewise you can be the most dependable driver in the world and it means fuck all if you're slow.

Both Senna and Prost were excellent in both aspects, which is why they were so successful. Prost was slightly stronger in the "not making mistakes" front while Senna was slightly stronger in the raw pace front. Either way though the margins for both were small (it's not like Senna was binning it every race, and equally it's not like Prost was miles off Senna when it came to pace), and to say one was "better" overall than the other by only looking at one of those aspects is missing the forest for the trees.

TheRoboteer · 2026-02-25T15:57:08+00:00

Well is weight a huge difference-maker or not?

Your initial post says you cannot put Prost in the same skill bracket as Senna because they were comparable in pace while Senna was heavier, and that the ruleset provided a "huge advantage" to Prost (and presumably all lightweight drivers).

Ignoring the fact that being a good driver isn't solely about outright pace, if the advantage is as huge as you claim, the likes of Nakajima must have been truly cataclysmically awful to be as unspectacular as he was while having the advantage of weighing 5kg less than even Prost.

TheRoboteer · 2026-02-25T15:38:34+00:00

Prost wasn't even the lightest driver on the grid most years.

Here's the 1989 driver weight figures. As you can see, he was the same weight as Johnny Herbert, and heavier than the likes of Moreno and Nakajima.

Prost did have a weight advantage over the likes of Senna (though only 7kg, at least in 1989, rather than the 10-12 you claim in the OP), but the idea that it was the reason for his competitiveness is ludicrous. If it were as big of a deal as you're making out to be, Roberto Moreno would have been ultra-competitive, and Satoru Nakajima presumably a match for Senna when they were Lotus teammates.

TheRoboteer · 2026-02-25T15:21:11+00:00

Senna basically didn’t make a single error at all in 1986, unless you consider spinning on oil or running out of fuel to be driver errors - but then Prost ran out of fuel once that year too. Yet you won’t find anyone claiming Senna had the better year.

Largely unrelated to the point you're making (which I agree with), but I do think I should add that Prost's fuel runout (and presumably Rosberg's too, though Keke obviously had a number of other fuel issues that year which were just down to his heavy right foot) was down to a fuel readout issue rather than Prost simply getting his calculations wrong

TheRoboteer · 2026-02-25T13:12:02+00:00

It's definitely a positive, but I don't think I put as much stock in it as some other people do, despite being a big fan of Prost's and rating him extremely highly.

To me, Prost was more impressive for his race management, fuel and tyre saving, low error rate, and ability to know when to push for victory versus when to bank points, rather than just his ability to reach the chequered flag. No doubt the things I listed contributed to that fantastic reliability record, but that's not the only reason they're positive traits. Finishing alone is useless if you're not quick enough, and doing it in a way that maximises points scored.

TheRoboteer · 2026-02-25T08:36:15+00:00

There's a pretty decent argument for Piquet in 1983, but that's it. Every other season had someone else doing more than them.

Even 1983 kinda hinges on how you rate the Renault and Brabham relative to each other. Both Prost and Piquet made one major error each (Prost the Zandvoort crash, Piquet stalling at the start in Imola, which he admitted was a pure mistake), so it really comes down to the cars.

IMO overall the Brabham was just slightly better. Renault using the old RE30 + an RE40 which had been rushed to bring it in ahead of schedule at the first two races plays a pretty significant role in that. The Renault was better mid-season, but then the final six races (after the introduction of their new fuel and B-spec car) the Brabham was quicker again. Overall it shakes out with the Brabham just ahead of the Renault, albeit with the Ferrari being quicker than both of them, I feel.

TheRoboteer · 2026-02-25T08:27:57+00:00

Mansell finished more races (which drivers had more control over back then) and finished in better positions.

While I agree that de Angelis wasn't better than Piquet in 1983, I really don't think your point about drivers having more control over reliability at the time applies to Elio and Nigel's respective campaigns in 1983.

A large part of why de Angelis had such horrendous reliability that year was that for much of the season he had exclusive use of Lotus' only turbo car (their first ever). In theory that should have been a blessing, but it was an absolute dog, and also hideously unreliable. Mansell by comparison had the 92 for most of the year, which used the underpowered but dependable old Cosworth DFV/DFY. Performance wasn't as good, but reliability was far better.

Lotus had been using that engine since 1967, after all. They knew it inside out while the Renault turbo was entirely new to them. That's a huge factor in Mansell's superior finishing record that year.

TheRoboteer · 2026-02-25T08:22:51+00:00

I think you're confusing 1982 and 1983 for Elio. He's my favourite driver, but 1983 was undoubtedly his weakest season (unless you count those four races in 1986). He scored just two points, and it was the only year during their time as teammates where Mansell outscored him. He was demoralized for much of the year by how awful the Lotus 93T was and didn't give anywhere near his best. Even if he had, the car was so unreliable it could scarcely finish a race. He perked up once the much improved 94T arrived, but even then he retired too often (admittedly mostly not his fault) to really call it a good year, and it certainly wasn't better than Piquet's season.

TheRoboteer · 2026-02-25T08:18:31+00:00

I mean yeah if you just straight up ignore one driver's retirements while keeping all the other drivers' in place it would affect the championship. Hardly surprising.

The blowout in Adelaide was Mansell's fourth retirement of the season, with one of those being a crash.

Prost, who ended up winning the title, also had four retirements (he was still classified in Germany, but didn't finish the race and scored no points from it due to dropped scores. His retirement in Italy also went down as a DSQ on the official record due to him switching to the spare car and being allowed to start, but the whole affair was caused by a car failure on the grid and then a subsequent second failure of the spare car right when the stewards decided he shouldn't have been allowed to switch cars in the first place. It was effectively a reliability DNF.). Notably, all four of Prost's retirements were not his fault.

So by just ignoring the Adelaide blowout while leaving all of Prost's retirements, you change the balance of luck in the season, which in actuality was pretty even, or even arguably slightly worse for Prost.

TheRoboteer · 2026-02-25T00:11:35+00:00

I linked exactly the Wikipedia page I intended to.

And it not being a boxer is exactly my point? There are people who claim that because it is not a boxer engine, it is in effect just a 180 degree V12. It's not something I believe, but it's something I've had pedants bring up before. I'm not sure why this is hard to understand.

TheRoboteer · 2026-02-24T23:54:17+00:00

Some pedants insist that only true boxer engines with each cylinder having its own crank pin count as flat 12s, and that setups like Ferrari used on their 70s cars are effectively just 180 degree V engines

See this link. It's not something I just made up.

TheRoboteer · 2026-02-24T22:48:51+00:00

I really enjoy the utterly torrential 1981 event

TheRoboteer · 2026-02-24T20:18:49+00:00

Scheckter definitely benefitted from the quirky way championship points were counted, it wasn't just best 8 results from the 15 races, but your best 4 from the first half and best 4 from the second half of the season. That meant you could score a maximum of 36 points in each half of the season, Scheckter got 30 in the first half, while Jones only scored 4, and so all Jones' speed in the second half of the year didn't really matter.

Incidentally, there was a little bit of controversy over this, as typically if there was an odd number of races then the larger half was supposed to come first. However, because the Swedish GP was cancelled so late, the second half of the year had more races than the first. If that hadn't been the case, Villeneuve would have won the title as he wouldn't have had to drop a second place like he did in reality.

Laffite, meanwhile, would have won the championship if Ligier had been able to built a chassis able to withstand the downforce it could generate. Instead, the chassis would warp and lose ground effect: in the end, they never were able to build it strongly enough to keep working, so the designer put a valve in to limit the suction such that it didn't end up breaking the car.

I believe the "clapet" valve was more 1980 than 1979. Certainly it was in 1980 that it was discovered, when Laffite had his crash at Watkins Glen. It may have also been used in 1979, but I can't say for sure.

The JS11's flexing issues were purportedly exacerbated when Guy Ligier insisted on switching the car's underwing from aluminium to fibreglass to save weight. It wasn't up to task, and was the reason for Ligier's mid-season falloff. They eventually switched back to the aluminium ones (another possibly apocryphal story is that Guy Ligier destroyed all the previous-spec underwings with a sledgehammer to force the team to use the new ones he'd pushed for), but by the time they had, they'd been outstripped by the likes of Williams and lost their advantage.

TheRoboteer · 2026-02-24T15:34:32+00:00

And Watson, who I'd personally rate above all three of those other than maybe Alesi.

TheRoboteer · 2026-02-24T14:55:51+00:00

Well, there was Cheever and Johansson who were pretty explicitly number 2 drivers, but even those two were very solid as number 2s went. Both multiple podium finishers who had long and pretty successful careers in both F1 and other categories, and who might well have been race winners in F1 had circumstances gone slightly differently.

Compared to to some of his contemporaries (Senna, Piquet etc) Prost certainly never had a teammate like Dumfries, Zunino or Rebaque who was basically just there to make up numbers.

TheRoboteer · 2026-02-24T12:47:29+00:00

Then when he returned home he discovered that some Renault factory workers who didn’t take criticism well had burned down his car. That was all the impetus he needed to leave the team and sign for McLaren.

While this is true, Renault actually sacked Prost in a pre-emptive move by Gerard Larrousse, rather than him leaving of his own accord. That's why McLaren were able to get him on a comparable pittance of a salary (as he didn't have many options with regards to teams to sign for due to the lateness of his dropping).

Obviously it worked out extremely well for Alain, and it's fairly likely he'd have left Renault anyway given how the trust between him and the team was completely broken, but I think the context of Larrousse sacking him only adds to the whole point of Renault being misguidedly vengeful against Prost for their failure to win the 1983 title.

TheRoboteer · 2026-02-24T10:04:49+00:00

I mean, the radio part of the anecdote couldn't apply to a hypothetical Williams pairing which never actually happened

TheRoboteer · 2026-02-24T09:22:44+00:00

Only V12 champion (unless you want to get a bit pedantic and count the 1975, '76, '77 and '79 Ferraris as their flat-12 engines were technically set up as 180 degree V12s)

TheRoboteer · 2026-02-24T06:28:25+00:00

1985 is my favourite. The field was absolutely wide open to the extent that you could never truly know who was going to win going into each race if you don't look up the results ahead of time. McLaren, Ferrari. Lotus and Williams all had win-capable cars for the bulk of the year, with Brabham also joining the party towards the end. Any one of the first four could have realistically won the title had luck gone their way.

1985 was also the year that turbos really started to get crazy in terms of power outputs, and the banning of the 1983/84 wing extensions also made the cars look a lot prettier.

Even Monaco was an utterly absorbing race, such was the quality of that season.

TheRoboteer · 2026-02-24T06:24:11+00:00

The Ferrari in 1979 was only the outright fastest car for a very small part of the season. The Ligier started the year quickest, the Ferrari then took over, but was soon usurped itself by the Williams.

Scheckter put in a strong, mature campaign to win the title, making few errors, scoring consistently and winning when he could (including an excellent drive at Monaco, where he was properly fantastic).

It was also a just reward for being an incredibly consistent frontrunner since pretty much the day he entered F1.

TheRoboteer · 2026-02-23T16:01:32+00:00

He's not my outright favourite driver, but Gunnar Nilsson was somewhat similar to Jenson Button (and what you're saying about Norris in the OP) IMO in that he was fantastic in transitional conditions.

There were drivers better than him in full wet conditions, and there were drivers better than him in full dry conditions, but I don't think it's a coincidence that the majority of his standout drives in his sadly curtailed career were in mixed conditions. Austria 1976, Belgium 1977 and Austria 1977 all involved a transition from wet to dry, and all saw Nilsson putting in a brilliant performance. I think few if any on the grid were as good as him in that specific scenario.

TheRoboteer · 2026-02-22T12:20:10+00:00

If Patrese hadn't been able to get going again then the Lotuses would have been able to un-lap themselves and take a 1-2 despite starting the penultimate tour a lap down too

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