What Happened to the OverTaking Group?

Jim Watt · Post by **Jim Watt** » Sat Feb 26, 2011 5:27 am

Was just reading Glenn Compton (spelling?) over at Pit Pass.com. He was bemoaning the lack of overtaking, or, more properly, exciting racing, in F1. Granted that F1 invites (& rewards) the skills of designers like A. Newey & granted that engineering is an important part of racing, what has happened to the old days when men like old man Ferrari himself, and Colin Chapman, and Bruce McLaren and others turned their creations over to actual drivers to slam around the circuits and daring others to braking contests on the very verge of disaster. I mean the S. Moss's and the J.M. Fangios, the founder of the Andretti clan and mad men like dear A. Senna? As Compton points out, it isn't all that hard to take the aerodynamics out and put the drivers back in to the cars. Am I asking for more danger? I don't think so. But when a driver as good as Alonso can't get his machine back into the race because he can't overtake obvious back markers (as in the WDC deciding last race of the year last year) something seems wrong and in need of changing at the very least.

hope this season is more fun.

jim watt

Ed · Post by Ed » Mon Feb 28, 2011 9:55 am

Good to hear from you again Jim ... the 2011 season is about to start albiet delayed by a further two weeks!

On the issue you raise, we are about to witness an new era in F1 with plenty of overtaking (at least that's the theory), the overtaking "apparently" will be so much that we won't like it! At least that is according to a few of the drivers who are complaining about the changes.

It appears that the single most important factor this year that will show us plenty of overtaking are the Pirelli tyres, they go off so quickly that the difference in lap time between a worn tyre and a new one could be as high as 6 seconds.

There is also the adjustable rear wing and KERS, both of which should help in the overtaking but the driver is having to manage too many things at the time of attempting to overtake so we'll be seeing lots of mistakes as well!

Will this mean exciting duels ? We'll have to wait and see.

Also you may want to check out Mike N's article on Pre Season Testing, it is worth a read.

Thaddeus · Post by **Thaddeus** » Sun Mar 06, 2011 1:09 am

I read somewhere or other that Alonso reckoned the adjustable rear wing would help if the car is substantially faster than the one being pursued (ie, Alonso could've passed Petrov in Abu Dhabi with it) but won't provide an unfair, artificial advantage.

If that's right, it sounds ok.

I think complaints about lack of overtaking are a bit overdone. The problem is that some circuits (Abu Dhabi, Bahrain etc) are rubbish, and make overtaking difficult. Old school circuits like Interlagos, Spa and Silverstone are much better.