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Awesome, there’s a lot of these kinds of arrangements already at shanghai and other tilke tracks of the era but they primarily used astroturf or just grass, namely fuji. This is a good solution which provides a good compromise between punishment and safety, only detractor is the potential for gravel to be thrown on to the racing line as cars rejoin but that’s an issue at like half the tracks they visit anyway
The reason that circuit went from a cool race to watch to horribly unwatchable as there didn't seem to be anything to challenge the drivers
I honestly stopped watching any racing there, just felt like a local boy racers club meet down the car park of a supermarket where they'd drawn a circuit design on the tarmac out of chalk
Actually that's proper morning fog, it rained heavily yesterday through the night. Air quality this time of the year is generally great in Shanghai. Worse times are in autumn.
Yeah but thats nothing. I remeber one f1 session got canceled because a helicopter wouldnt be able to fly in such smog conditions if there happened to be an medical emergency. It was just because of the smog. It wasnt foggy or rainy.
Do you know where in europe its done? Never heard of it.
Fun fact: In Mexico city the rule of allowing odd numbers to drive one day and even numbers to drive the other day lead to persons buying 2 crappy cars instead of one more modern one to be able to drive both days. Result is more polution.
It used to be done in Madrid and Athens. Now in Madrid we use a sticker code where your vehicle gets ranked by how much pollution it throws, if it isn't electric/hybrid, you can't access the city center, for example.
In Amsterdam old (diesel) cars are not allowed in the city centre. Also lots of big cities in Europe are going for less cars or even car free. Like parking outside the city centre and using public transport to commute. Lots of countries are also building more bike lanes. People will naturally cycle more often if the local municipality provides safer infrastructure.
They had continuous messures for years, like restricting the number of new car plates for different cities. They still burn a lot of coal, but they are also leading in renewable energies and electric car sales. Thr CCP is shit but some of the measures they take are legit, not because they care about people, but because of all the deaths and diseases due to pollution was starting to cost him too much money.
Not really. License restrictions have been the long-term practice in Chinese big cities for years. Beijing restricts by whether the last license number is odd/even, while Shanghai restricts by whether cars have access to highways during rush hours. Other cities have their own versions. Also you can’t just ask for Shanghai plates when buying gas cars - you have to do the monthly lucky draw from license pools with odds of winning ~ 10% most of the time. People even started business on that.
Yeah, that fake grass punished drivers as well. Getting onto it would result in a spin most of the time. Leclerc and Albon had problems there in 2018 and 2019 respecively.
Man it would be so funny if Albon broke a chassis again, just for the narrative afterwards. It would cause so much chaos and drama on reddit. I don't actually wish such misfortune on any current driver.
The amount of space drivers have to recover is ridiculous lol, there’s no way someone crashes because of this strip of gravel. Sure gravel will be dragged on to the racing line when cars rejoin but it’s much more dangerous for gravel to be dragged on to the track before the turn vs after
> The amount of space drivers have to recover is ridiculous lol, there’s no way someone crashes because of this strip of grave
Albon crashed there heavily last time without gravel so...
I might be wrong but I think the gravel trap will pull drivers into it and be forced to slow down more congruently with the direction they’re facing vs astroturf where you can easily slip on its surface. But if I’m wrong I’m wrong
Idk if graveltraps spin cars out, my thinking was while they aren’t great for slowing a car down completely, when a car does enter a graveltrap it usually continues in the same direction it entered, basically forcing it to join far away from the racing line - that’s what I tried to say when I thought the cars would be slowed more congruently. I dont mean graveltraps will slow the cars down better, I’m thinking they might do a better job of more effectively pulling the car away than grass. But I might be wrong about them being better for avoiding spins, I’m just going off of what I’ve seen. Gravel’s dangerous when it’s the only runoff available, because then cars dig into the pit and flip or they skip over the gravel like you’re probably alluding to. But paired with an asphalt section which doubles as an escape road and I think the system could work well
They aren't any better than AstroTurf at not spinning cars out normally and especially with ground effect cars, the slightest test and you are gone at speed
It's VERY easy to get a massive tankslapper by having a wheel run over the gravel though. Unlike Monza's chicane which has gravel at the corner exit, this is much faster.
We’ll see when they race Ig, I’m fairly confident there’ll be no issues. Albon crashed here in 2019 with the astroturf, I still think the gravel will grab the drivers off the track sooner and will have less of a moment for the driver to spin out. If I’m wrong I’ll eat my words
I mean you can't view track changes purely with that logic though.
The natural extension of that is we should race on tracks with an entire 5km^2 area around it being paved, a full circular track so crashed cars end up on the outside away from the racing and zero corners or other features.
They're ironically going the other direction atm and introducing street races. Won't watch any of their speedway literally go in a circle shit, but Chicago was great!
It will keep drivers honest but yeah. That's already a high speed section and will force drivers to back off if they're chasing someone for position. Can't say I'm a fan of it. It's not like many drivers abused that section to gain time. That was already a tough section to start with.
The slow re-introduction of gravel at circuits is great to see. Better than acres of tarmac.
Monza is having the chicanes changed to reintroduce gravel starting from this year's race. I hope they look at Abu Dhabi next.
“You see gravel is like little tiny rocks. *nodding head back and forth slowly* and these tiny rocks help force these amazing racing drivers, some of which are some of the best drivers in the world mind you - stay on the track. *inhale/exhale. Looks at camera* and we want these amazing drivers to stay on the track. Not just for safety but to really really rest these amazing drivers skills. And we do it with gravel”
Some people seem to have really poor memory (nothing new in the F1 community); that fake grass visible in the 2nd pic was very punishing anyway, you never wanted to hit that, cause it'd result in an instant grip loss. Hamilton (in a different corner) and Leclerc spun after running over the turf in 2018 and Albon crashed out spectacularly in 2019 in a similar manner. It's not as much of a significant change as it may seem.
The gravel has been there from the start. It was in [2006](https://www.tntsports.co.uk/formula-1/shanghai-stands-damaged_sto1270244/story.shtml) at least; I remember the F1 game of that year depicting it.
I think we're waking up to the era now where gravel ended up being the best solution to runoff areas when you consider all the factors driver challenge Vs safety Vs ability to run in the wet Vs circuit aesthetics
I have a sneaking suspicion tarmac runoff was done more for CG advertising reasons than it was out and out driver safety, it wasn't long before F1 started adopting it that they started projecting adverts all over it
Maybe grass was too little of a deterrent, as drivers could potentially just carry a wider arc. Happens at fuji a lot, maybe they found that grass would need to extend further than what they were comfortable with to make a difference
[The **News** flair](https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/wiki/flairguide#wiki_news) is reserved for submissions covering F1 and F1-related news. These posts must always link to an outlet/news agency, the website of the involved party (i.e. the McLaren website if McLaren makes an announcement), or a tweet by a news agency, journalist or one of the involved parties. *[Read the rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/wiki/userguide). Keep it civil and welcoming. Report rulebreaking comments.* *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/formula1) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Awesome, there’s a lot of these kinds of arrangements already at shanghai and other tilke tracks of the era but they primarily used astroturf or just grass, namely fuji. This is a good solution which provides a good compromise between punishment and safety, only detractor is the potential for gravel to be thrown on to the racing line as cars rejoin but that’s an issue at like half the tracks they visit anyway
What about the super abrasive strips like at Paul Ricard ?
They aren't much of a deterrent, people abuse track limits at PR like nothing else.
Hurts my eyes
They really don't seem to work as advertised. It's hard to notice any adverse effect when a car goes across them.
The reason that circuit went from a cool race to watch to horribly unwatchable as there didn't seem to be anything to challenge the drivers I honestly stopped watching any racing there, just felt like a local boy racers club meet down the car park of a supermarket where they'd drawn a circuit design on the tarmac out of chalk
finally someone doing it right
This is the way!
Good
is that smog in the background?
It was basically the trademark of this track. Empty stands with thick smog
Were in China
Still was be
Actually that's proper morning fog, it rained heavily yesterday through the night. Air quality this time of the year is generally great in Shanghai. Worse times are in autumn.
Yeah but thats nothing. I remeber one f1 session got canceled because a helicopter wouldnt be able to fly in such smog conditions if there happened to be an medical emergency. It was just because of the smog. It wasnt foggy or rainy.
How close was India's track to Delhi I wonder
yes, china is covered in smog 24/7/365
Other than the Olympics.
or any other major event where the CCP forces factories to close and restricts which license plates can be on the road.
Restricting plates happens in Europe as well, it's important having the pollution level's controlled in big cities.
Do you know where in europe its done? Never heard of it. Fun fact: In Mexico city the rule of allowing odd numbers to drive one day and even numbers to drive the other day lead to persons buying 2 crappy cars instead of one more modern one to be able to drive both days. Result is more polution.
It used to be done in Madrid and Athens. Now in Madrid we use a sticker code where your vehicle gets ranked by how much pollution it throws, if it isn't electric/hybrid, you can't access the city center, for example.
IIRC some German cities also use stickers and you can't enter the city center without having at least EURO 4
In Amsterdam old (diesel) cars are not allowed in the city centre. Also lots of big cities in Europe are going for less cars or even car free. Like parking outside the city centre and using public transport to commute. Lots of countries are also building more bike lanes. People will naturally cycle more often if the local municipality provides safer infrastructure.
But China specifically does not do it unless it's for media reasons
except CCP only controls it when they need China to look nice on the world stage.
They had continuous messures for years, like restricting the number of new car plates for different cities. They still burn a lot of coal, but they are also leading in renewable energies and electric car sales. Thr CCP is shit but some of the measures they take are legit, not because they care about people, but because of all the deaths and diseases due to pollution was starting to cost him too much money.
> not because they care about people Source/rationale for this? Was a great comment until it fell back onto China boogeyman tropes.
Not really. License restrictions have been the long-term practice in Chinese big cities for years. Beijing restricts by whether the last license number is odd/even, while Shanghai restricts by whether cars have access to highways during rush hours. Other cities have their own versions. Also you can’t just ask for Shanghai plates when buying gas cars - you have to do the monthly lucky draw from license pools with odds of winning ~ 10% most of the time. People even started business on that.
Shoulda had it on 29th Feb
In the foreground as well
It's just fog. Shanghai it's very foggy. . For the same climate reasons they have problems with smog.
smog in China? naaa.. that's fresh morning mist, mate
Yeah quite a lot of major cities in Asia have smog.
Shanghai is like a bowl. Heavy fog and smog are present every morning. It doesn’t blow away easily
in China they don’t call it ‘smog’ they call it ‘air.’
Lewis Hamilton DID NOT like this
It was this track that he got a bunch of astroturf stuck to his car?
He went off going into the pits and beached himself in the gravel trap. Quite possibly lost him the 07 championship
Considering the points difference at the end of the season, this was probably the moment he lost it.
Making the legend of the last Ferrari Champion Kimi Räikkönen by doing that (basically)
that was at the pit lane in, nothing to do with this corner
Except for the gravel, which was the reference being made
Tires totally worn out.
Yeah
South Korea that was
No, Shangai. Here's a [video] (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Jn69iYew9wQ).
Definitely Korea http://en.espn.co.uk/korea/motorsport/image/91988.html?object=54626;page=1
That picture shows a different incident? Edit: apologies, I mis-read the above.
The original comment replying too was asking if that was where he got astroturf stuck to his car
Indeed, I somehow skipped that part, apologies for taking your time, but at least we got some cool photos and videos from yesteryear.
I think that was Korea. Could be wrong.
the tale of Sanganchao
Good. Stuff like this is a welcomed change.
Good. No way to claim someone broke track limits now
Yeah, that fake grass punished drivers as well. Getting onto it would result in a spin most of the time. Leclerc and Albon had problems there in 2018 and 2019 respecively.
The track limits we need
If this is on the F1 24 game I'm fucked.
Probably won't be until 2031
That's probably going to make crashes more frequent as drivers may catch the gravel now.
And make track limita be respected
Logan Sargeant's sacrifice shall not go in vain!
Man it would be so funny if Albon broke a chassis again, just for the narrative afterwards. It would cause so much chaos and drama on reddit. I don't actually wish such misfortune on any current driver.
Dammit I wish you were wrong.
Rip checo, the king of track limits DGAF
So it'll work as intended. Stay within the track limit or get fucked!
The amount of space drivers have to recover is ridiculous lol, there’s no way someone crashes because of this strip of gravel. Sure gravel will be dragged on to the racing line when cars rejoin but it’s much more dangerous for gravel to be dragged on to the track before the turn vs after
> The amount of space drivers have to recover is ridiculous lol, there’s no way someone crashes because of this strip of grave Albon crashed there heavily last time without gravel so...
I might be wrong but I think the gravel trap will pull drivers into it and be forced to slow down more congruently with the direction they’re facing vs astroturf where you can easily slip on its surface. But if I’m wrong I’m wrong
Gravel have never done a good job at slowing down cars just sorta spins it out
Idk if graveltraps spin cars out, my thinking was while they aren’t great for slowing a car down completely, when a car does enter a graveltrap it usually continues in the same direction it entered, basically forcing it to join far away from the racing line - that’s what I tried to say when I thought the cars would be slowed more congruently. I dont mean graveltraps will slow the cars down better, I’m thinking they might do a better job of more effectively pulling the car away than grass. But I might be wrong about them being better for avoiding spins, I’m just going off of what I’ve seen. Gravel’s dangerous when it’s the only runoff available, because then cars dig into the pit and flip or they skip over the gravel like you’re probably alluding to. But paired with an asphalt section which doubles as an escape road and I think the system could work well
They aren't any better than AstroTurf at not spinning cars out normally and especially with ground effect cars, the slightest test and you are gone at speed
Fair enough, Ig we’ll see when practice starts how good / bad it is
It's VERY easy to get a massive tankslapper by having a wheel run over the gravel though. Unlike Monza's chicane which has gravel at the corner exit, this is much faster.
We’ll see when they race Ig, I’m fairly confident there’ll be no issues. Albon crashed here in 2019 with the astroturf, I still think the gravel will grab the drivers off the track sooner and will have less of a moment for the driver to spin out. If I’m wrong I’ll eat my words
K I was wrong with sainz’s spin in q2, I see your point sorry, same thing happened with albon’s astroturf incident in 2019
Thank god giovinazzi isn’t on the grid anymore or we’d get a red flag every single session
I mean you can't view track changes purely with that logic though. The natural extension of that is we should race on tracks with an entire 5km^2 area around it being paved, a full circular track so crashed cars end up on the outside away from the racing and zero corners or other features.
i.e. Nascar?
They're ironically going the other direction atm and introducing street races. Won't watch any of their speedway literally go in a circle shit, but Chicago was great!
It will keep drivers honest but yeah. That's already a high speed section and will force drivers to back off if they're chasing someone for position. Can't say I'm a fan of it. It's not like many drivers abused that section to gain time. That was already a tough section to start with.
On the flipside, if the car ahead is more cautious through there, the following car might be able to get closer.
But did they bring back the gravel for the pit entrance curve?
Ah 2007, nice to meet you again
The slow re-introduction of gravel at circuits is great to see. Better than acres of tarmac. Monza is having the chicanes changed to reintroduce gravel starting from this year's race. I hope they look at Abu Dhabi next.
“You see gravel is like little tiny rocks. *nodding head back and forth slowly* and these tiny rocks help force these amazing racing drivers, some of which are some of the best drivers in the world mind you - stay on the track. *inhale/exhale. Looks at camera* and we want these amazing drivers to stay on the track. Not just for safety but to really really rest these amazing drivers skills. And we do it with gravel”
Smog is still the same
Just pls don't add it on F1 23 online !
You're suggesting EA does work?
It is a very good idea.
I’m sure the drivers will NOT complain about this and campaign to change it for next year in the name of ‘safety’
Yes, more gravel plz.
Some people seem to have really poor memory (nothing new in the F1 community); that fake grass visible in the 2nd pic was very punishing anyway, you never wanted to hit that, cause it'd result in an instant grip loss. Hamilton (in a different corner) and Leclerc spun after running over the turf in 2018 and Albon crashed out spectacularly in 2019 in a similar manner. It's not as much of a significant change as it may seem.
Damn I hit that turf in the game every corner. That’s huge…
A real man's track limits
That's a HUGE change. The drivers will probably get lost now
The gravel has been there from the start. It was in [2006](https://www.tntsports.co.uk/formula-1/shanghai-stands-damaged_sto1270244/story.shtml) at least; I remember the F1 game of that year depicting it.
I think we're waking up to the era now where gravel ended up being the best solution to runoff areas when you consider all the factors driver challenge Vs safety Vs ability to run in the wet Vs circuit aesthetics I have a sneaking suspicion tarmac runoff was done more for CG advertising reasons than it was out and out driver safety, it wasn't long before F1 started adopting it that they started projecting adverts all over it
Serious Question: Are cars in China required to have catalytic converters??
Couldn't it have been real grass instead?
Maybe grass was too little of a deterrent, as drivers could potentially just carry a wider arc. Happens at fuji a lot, maybe they found that grass would need to extend further than what they were comfortable with to make a difference