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Open Wheel Racing 2021, anyone there to watch?

aparch said:
All those streets were repaved and manholes adjusted (or should have been) prior to the repave. The engineering firm (or I guess Clark County / City of Vegas Public Works) should have had documentation where each and every structure was located.

On top of that, F1, *at a minimum* should have had a walk through of the track the day prior to activity with a contractor on hand for last minute issues like this to be resolved.

If this is F1's deal (as I've seen) and they don't have a middle man putting this event on, this is 100% on F1.



What's embarrassing is that the NASCAR race in Chicago was commended for not having issues like this when I could d*mn well see clear as day dur8ng the broadcast there were structures and other imperfections where the contractor took shortcuts or structures weren't adjusted correctly.
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I assumed an F1 track was surveyed with lasers and then graded flat to the Planck scale. It never occurred to me they would even allow disturbances to the plane like manholes or drain pipes -- but that all of that was taken care of off the track. I just assumed even a street race meant the entire length of the race the roads were hyper-engineered so you could drive those fragile little show ponies over them at eleventy-billion kpm (6.83508311 billion mph).
 
Kepler said:
I assumed an F1 track was surveyed with lasers and then graded flat to the Planck scale. It never occurred to me they would even allow disturbances to the plane like manholes or drain pipes -- but that all of that was taken care of off the track. I just assumed even a street race meant the entire length of the race the roads were hyper-engineered so you could drive those fragile little show ponies over them at eleventy-billion kpm (6.83508311 billion mph).
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Well, there's your problem.

There have been some horrific street tracks, even in recent history. Singapore was know for the Singapore Sling- which was a massive bump on the track. That's the #1 risk of having street tracks, #2 would be it being so narrow that you can't really race (see Monaco).

To me, aparch's point that this is all on F1 is the real highlight in the problem. It kind of boggles my mind that they are doing this all on their own, and not milking some local government that wants a race. Or local organizer- which is what happened at Indy. In terms of fans and access, that is easily the best circuit, ever, on the F1 calendar. The locality is totally set up for 600k people, so the 250k that showed at the F1 race was easy. Sight lines were great- as much of the higher stands could see the entire circuit. By far, the largest number of fans at a race- Indy was getting as many for just the race as Silverstone was getting for the whole weekend.

But F1 wanted more money out of it.

Anyway....
 
Kepler said:
I assumed an F1 track was surveyed with lasers and then graded flat to the Planck scale. It never occurred to me they would even allow disturbances to the plane like manholes or drain pipes -- but that all of that was taken care of off the track. I just assumed even a street race meant the entire length of the race the roads were hyper-engineered so you could drive those fragile little show ponies over them at eleventy-billion kpm (6.83508311 billion mph).
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I forget whose video this comes from, but they actually stated the paving tolerance: 3mm vertical change in the surface over 4 meters length. I assume that is strictly referring to the plane that the pavement is on, since there are obviously hills on natural terrain courses that are over that tolerance.
 
Kepler said:
Yes, the worry is they will break the Montreal record. This is at night. Deserts are hot in the day... and cold at night. I guess there are no desert courses on F1 oh wait.

I watched an excellent video with a guy who made a good point: those temperatures usually mean "winter testing," meaning among other things two warm up laps instead of one during quali. So now we'll have twice as many drivers going slow while other drivers try to get in their timed laps, all under cold conditions with no grip on a track that exacerbates by having few turns.

Whoopie!
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Speaking of Montreal, has anyone been? It’s close enough for me that I could go there and back same day. I’m not the biggest F1 fan in the world but as a sports lover in general am interested in going to a race. If you have gone how is it as far as getting in and out of the event and where is the best value as far as seats?

I went to the Rodgers Cup in Montreal a few years ago and it was by far the most disorganized thing I have ever been to. The parking and ticketing could not have been worse if they tried.
 
Kepler said:
When Kym Ilman, the white-haired dude, was doing a track walk early in the week, he noted the manholes were not welded down. I thought I had mentioned that in an earlier post.
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I read there’s a Vegas city law which prevents welding manhole covers down. So, they devised a complicated system (which I will not attempt to explain) to lock them down.

Technically it worked. It was not a manhole cover which came up. I would also argue it worked period. The drain cover which came up did not come up by itself. It tore up the surrounding asphalt. How they locked it down worked. The weak point was the asphalt around it, something which would not have been spotted in an inspection.
 
SJHovey said:
One of the things you're seeing is there is very limited general benefit getting spread around. There are about 3-4 casinos in Las Vegas that F1 teams, fans or visitors would consider staying at. They aren't staying at Planet Hollywood or Treasure Island or the Flamingo or any places like that.

The exceedingly upscale locations in Vegas are doing fine by the event, but very little of Vegas fits in that category.
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Not only that, the local grunt workers have complained they are not seeing any of these extra profits — no raises, even temporary, no attempt to pay them for lost time in traffic jams, higher parking costs, and as was mentioned elsewhere, Euros don’t tip.
 
MichVandal said:
Has been for a very, very long time- manhole covers have almost killed drivers in the past. But to not allow Sainz to fix his car when he did nothing wrong (like brush up against a wall), not sure about that. That seems weak. I understand the rule, but how are drivers supposed to know that driving over a metal cover was going to destroy the car?
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Who was the driver in a world sports car event at Montreal who had a massive scary crash when he sucked up a manhole cover through his car?
 
MichVandal said:
Well, there's your problem.

There have been some horrific street tracks, even in recent history. Singapore was know for the Singapore Sling- which was a massive bump on the track.
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Remember the first year at Singapore when the high voltage of some subway station the cars ran over shorted the electronics out on some cars, causing them to shut off?
 
Drew S. said:
Speaking of Montreal, has anyone been? It’s close enough for me that I could go there and back same day. I’m not the biggest F1 fan in the world but as a sports lover in general am interested in going to a race. If you have gone how is it as far as getting in and out of the event and where is the best value as far as seats?
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Back when I was in college, which was a short drive away. So that was a long, long time ago.

I keep wanting to go back, but nowadays, even Montreal has fallen victim to the newfound popularity and prices and hassles have me questioning my desire.

As for seats, I would go with the custom package which allows you to pick (within reason) a different grandstand each day.
 
I'm not an F1 fan at all. Before Saturday, I probably hadn't watched more than 60 minutes of F1 racing, collectively, in my entire life.

But I gotta say this. We need a guy in the U.S. like the Sky Sports host with the mic, wandering through the pre-race crowd, looking for comments, then dropping subtle little insults about the people he came across as he pushed his way through the crowd. He reminded me of Rodney Dangerfield's character walking through the Bushwood Country Club dining room after dinner.

That's what we need on the sidelines before the Super Bowl.
 
SJHovey said:
I'm not an F1 fan at all. Before Saturday, I probably hadn't watched more than 60 minutes of F1 racing, collectively, in my entire life.

But I gotta say this. We need a guy in the U.S. like the Sky Sports host with the mic, wandering through the pre-race crowd, looking for comments, then dropping subtle little insults about the people he came across as he pushed his way through the crowd. He reminded me of Rodney Dangerfield's character walking through the Bushwood Country Club dining room after dinner.

That's what we need on the sidelines before the Super Bowl.
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Michael Waltrip does the same thing for Fox but it is a lot shorter segment.

Sky Sports really is great. They do a wonderful job with so many different sports and seem to get the best ex-players working for them.
 
For all the issues pre-race, the actual race delivered. Watched it yesterday morning and while Max getting a penalty helped it stay competitive for much longer (and then the second caution got him back into the race), this track appears to be a keeper. I saw it had the most overtakes (99) for a dry race in seven years. I think Hamilton alone had 15 of those, that was only because he had a puncture, but there seemed to be constant action. They scheduled it at night to give Europe a morning race and show off all the lights of the city, but making it at night and having the cooler temps added some variability for track and tire conditions as well. If Vegas doesn’t kick them out I think this will be a good ten year series for F1.
 
…just read Chris Medland’s report on racer.com


so honestly, what is the problem F1 has with Michael Andretti? Seriously, this garbage from the teams about $ is getting tired (they’ll still get a ton of $ with an Andretti team on the grid) I hope GM privately tells Stefano “we enter with Andretti or you can piss off without us”

and it’s not about his INDYCAR team either. For God’s sake Haas sucks, William’s is terrible, etc

It’s not about success or lack there of past or present.

something else appears to be at play for Domenicelli. Whether it’s what Medland describes I don’t know but this isn’t going to play well with the American audience long-term.
 
solovsfett said:
…just read Chris Medland’s report on racer.com


so honestly, what is the problem F1 has with Michael Andretti? Seriously, this garbage from the teams about $ is getting tired (they’ll still get a ton of $ with an Andretti team on the grid) I hope GM privately tells Stefano “we enter with Andretti or you can **** off without us”

and it’s not about his INDYCAR team either. For God’s sake Haas sucks, William’s is terrible, etc

It’s not about success or lack there of past or present.

something else appears to be at play for Domenicelli. Whether it’s what Medland describes I don’t know but this isn’t going to play well with the American audience long-term.
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Haas is an American team, right? So it isn't reflexively anti-American. Maybe they just hate the Andrettis?
 
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