F1 Grand Prix of India

So I just finished watching the Formula 1 Grand Prix of India. Lotta smog. Disgusting amounts of smog. Like LA back in the bad old days. I am now feeling more sympathetic to CARB for cleaning up California's air quality. There was so much smog you couldn't see all the way down the track, and there wasn't shadows, just gray skies starting a couple hundred yards away.

India has been raising a stink about whether the race is a sporting event or entertainment and wants to change the tax rate on the tickets based on this. F1 is pulling out of India over this childish bureaucratic manuvering and the new Russian driver supports a Russian race. I know that Korea is getting dropped too, for too few fans attending, poor ticket sales, and 2/3 of the stands in India were empty. Not like the European races, which were packed. Japan too was very well attended.

Efforts continue towards getting a race in New Jersey, and the race in Austin Texas is well attended, popular with movie stars as well. Good tracks deserve good races. Abu Dhabi is next week, in the Persian Gulf, and is known to be a fast track with windblown sand to make it interesting, since that hurts the grip on tires.

The tire maker for all the F1 races is Pirelli. I used to have Pirelli tires on my BMW decades ago. Great tires. Really grippy in the corners. Pirelli had to formulate their soft compound tires on certain data and those only last a few laps. The medium compound lasts better, but the race requires use of the soft at least once, and its considered a bit of a sacrifice, more of an obstacle than an advantage other than during qualifying. This is negative advertising for Pirelli and they're demanding the right to test next years compounds on the new model car before the season starts and they get locked in on compound spec. If they don't get a test car, they threaten to drop F1 support and walk away. That's a big deal because providing the tires to all the cars should be good advertising, but due to the poor wear of their soft tires, its actually hurting them, thus the threat. I suspect we'll see one of the other tire makers step into this mess and get similar issues. That's the thing about racing.

The Ferrari team is having a hell of a time this year. In prior years with Michael Schumacher driving they were dominant, but this year not so much. Its mostly been Red Bull, which is running a Renault (French) engine but built in Milton Keynes UK, just to muddy the water. Renault racing is doubly amusing since their passenger cars are not reliable by reputation. From what I can tell, the racing team may as well be a completely different company. There's no filter-down of racing tech from Renault into the commercial/passenger vehicles. Honda and Toyota both take stuff they learn in racing and put it into their cars a few years later. Thus VTEC etc. And Fuel Injection is from racing originally. Its in all cars since the 1980's. Disc brakes, water cooling, power steering: all from racing. There's important trickle down at other car companies. F1 stuff from Mercedes gets into their high-end coupes, for example. You see those on Top Gear.

Note that McLaren has an F1 team, as does Caterham, both of which have well known sports cars. Lotus, as usual, is racing F1 and their various sports cars are good enough I'd want one. The Elise is a viciously stripped down pure racing car, the kind I grew up driving back in the day. No luxuries, loud, and all about the handling and power to weight ratio. I respect that. Its rather the opposite of a comfy luxury touring car. Its angry and it throws you around. What's not to like?

I really hope the new model cars based on the new engines for F1 next year make it more challenging. Vettel is very smooth and its hard to beat him. He just won his 4th world championship today despite being a bunch of races left in the season. He got it on points. He's just that good. The same way Schumacher was good: smooth is fast. Both drivers, both German, were very smooth. It makes all the difference.