I have been thinking, and would like to propose a change to the qualifying/race format.
I think that we should have to qualify with our fuel for the race on board.
I know that this was removed by F1 irl because it doesn't promote on track overtaking and made racing less interesting and taking the power away from the drivers.
However, in Pitwall, we are the team managers and the power to win a race should be in our hands. The current lack of overtaking in races means that the races at the moments are predictable and boring. If we had to qualify with our race fuel, it would open up a new area of strategy for managers. At the moment at the front of the race its run as long as you can and that's the whole (and best) strategy, because track position is king/ lack of significant tyre degradation.
I also think that it could be interesting to give one championship point for Pole. This would lead to a strategic balance between qualifying pace and race pace.
I think that anything that remove having to sit behind a much slower driver for 50+ laps is a good idea.
I would be in favour of having to run both tyre compounds and limiting the amount of available tyres for a race week. I think that this would make managers consider their strategy more and force them to balance testing laps against race laps.
You may have a Superb setup due to testing laps, but have to pit 5 times in the race because you used all your tyres in testing and they are all at Very Bad and far slower than someone who did less testing laps and has a Good setup but Superb tyres.
Im not a fan of the points for qualifying but i could see the race fuel addition making things a little interesting.
As for overtaking it is hard but it's not impossible. Id like to get some actual info from Frank before any changes were made to that. I know a driver may be quicker but realistically he is always going to find it near impossible to overtake another excellent driver who is great at defence and less than 0.5 seconds slower per lap, even a driver who was a second a lap quicker would find it tougher.
I havent tested it but id be keen to see just how much overtaking is done by an excellent driver doing a 5 lap stint at the start of the race, you would expect he would breeze to the front and thats how it should be. The problem is we all do similar strategies and thus at the front most of the cars go similar speeds. A driver is going to need to have a significant speed advantage in a certain area of a track in order to overtake and at the moment we just dont know how the calcs work this out. I personally think too much emphasis is put on driver skill and not enough on the speed of the car, my number 2 isnt a great driver when it comes to overtaking and defending so even though he has the quickest car he gets overtaken a fair bit and also finds it hard to overtake.
Not sure if any of what i wrote makes sense but in summary i think Frank needs to open up about how overtaking is calculated before we can think about changes... maybe a crazy strategy from the start might give some insight?
The problem is that a car that is 0.5 sec a lap faster should get past at some point, no matter how good the other driver is at defending. 0.5 is a massive speed difference, particularly on the straight. It is not uncommon for a car that is 1+ sec a lap faster getting stuck behind a much slower car.
I don't think anyone wants to be able to breeze past every time, but getting stuck in a train behind a much slower car on Lap 10 shouldn't mean that you are still in that train on lap 50.
A little uncertainty about overtaking is a good thing, but knowing for certain that you won't get past unless the other car spins kid of sucks the fun out of the race.
Good idea John. It's something I have planned actually (as you can tell from the rule book, there is something in place already for points for a pole lap), and also a return of the start race with qualification load.
Experiment was complete failure, Akamatsu got off to a strong start but couldn't overtake, even with the pace advantage he held at the start - and continued to get bogged down.
hehe
