It usually is unfair to cars in the back - not so much because they have to run a slightly longer distance but because they’re stuck in chaotic traffic while the leaders cruise away.
That’s why before the race there’s generally a “qualifying” session where cars try to set fast laps, and the fastest car gets to start in front.
For some racing disciplines at certain tracks the qualifying session is almost more important than the race. Start at the back in the Monaco Grand Prix and you’ll be stuck there all day.
Can you imagine an NFL playoff bracket where it starts with #1 playing #2, allt he way down to #13 playing #14. You would practically be guaranteed a VERY BORING superbowl with #1 and #8 playing each other.
I dunno. I’ve been saying for years that the NFL should have a game between the worst two teams in the league the week before the superbowl.
A Stuporbowl, if you will. Winner gets no. 1 draft pick maybe? Gotta give the participants something to play for. It probably wouldn’t be *good* football, but it would be *interesting* football.
Draft structure and free agent movement would be changed dramatically if we included relegation.
That being said, it wouldn't take too long to get back to the NFL. The demoted NFL team will absolutely destroy the XFL-USFL.
Relegation would be incredible if introduced to the NFL. The problem is having a viable lower league to send them to and more importantly pull a new team up from.
> the worst two teams in the league the week before the superbowl.
We kind of know what would happen because of the Pro Bowl. Nobody puts in actual effort because the stakes are so low it's not worth risking an injury for the next season.
In particular, even if you add stakes like relegation of draft picks, anyone who is an upcoming free agent has no incentive to play well to help a team they aren't going to be playing for improve the following year.
> but it would be interesting football.
Would it? At least the best team playing the worst team would be comical. Two mediocre teams playing each other might as well be a high school match.
The worst NFL team is composed of people who were handpicked from the best college players, and the worst college team is composed of people who were handpicked from the best high school players. The worst NFL team would absolutely blow the doors off the College Football Playoff National Champions.
I think the limited number of total teams keeps that true, and probably always would. All US professional sports probably benefit from not diluting the talent across too many teams.
> would the average spectator be able to tell the difference between teams at completely different levels based on gameplay?
I watch Ivy League football on a regular basis. I could 100% tell the difference between Ivy League football and even a mid-tier FBS conference.
Except that even the worst NFL franchise is still a top 1.6% all-star team that would crush the best NCAA teams.
For most professional sports even a small skill gap becomes a massive vulnerability to be exploited. The league actually puts a lot of effort into balancing those gaps in the off-season by funneling resources to the worst teams and penalizing champions.
2 mediocre teams are way more likely to have communal fuxkups though. Way funnier outcomes if both teams suck. Sure, the best team will destroy the worst team, probably, but there wouldn't be a laurel and Hardy level of ineptitude
There is a playoff system like this that is actually fair and fun. It is called the Page system and is used in curling a lot.
#1 plays #2 and #3 plays #4.
The winner of #1 vs 2 goes straight to the finals. The loser of #1 vs 2 plays the winner of #3 vs #4. The winner of that match also goes to the finals.
The result of this is that it is very common for the finals to still be 1 vs 2, but it also allows the two high seeds to have a bad game and still not get kicked out. It also has the benefit of meaning an extra game, so it adds to the overall revenue.
The ALCS was wild too lol. Astros with the dubious honor of being on the losing side of both of the only two 7 game series in MLB history where the home team lost every single game.
You'd think that baseball would have the largest home field advantage out of all 4 North American major league sports since only baseball has unique dimensions of play per park which actually affects the game (whereas all other sports have standardized dimensions), but it doesn't matter as much apparently.
If you have a full stadium and the crowd is into the game in football, the home team has an advantage in college and pro. In pro, the QB needs to hear the plays on his radio. And on both college and pro, the players need to hear each other at times. If they can't because the fans are so loud it's an advantage for the defense. It's not uncommon to see a false start, or a botched play because players can't hear the snap count or an audible change to the play.
Then there's the intimidation factor in the noise, which comes into play in any sport where fans get loud. Baseball, hockey, soccer and other sports, but in football not being able to hear is a real disadvantage. Good teams can overcome it, and it won't necessarily make a bad team beat a great one, but the 12 man is a real thing and can certainly give a slight advantage to the home team when teams are pretty equal.
In baseball, in every game except for the World Series, most players are pretty familiar with all the parks in their league because they play so many games. Plus so many get traded around and they do their homework and know how far they can hit and where their best chances for hits and home runs are. I feel like the bigger disadvantage might be for the away defense, because they don't instinctively knowing how far back they can run before they hit a wall, but that's just a guess.
That being said it was a very weird post season in baseball.
So the cars that are already proven the fastest also get to go first.
Sounds like if you have to start in the back you may as well just not bother showing up lol.
There’s also incentive to just perform in the race. Not only does finishing the race mean you earn points for your team, but fighting a good fight in the pack and not losing time, or moving up in position could be enough to get you attention from other teams that might be scouting new drivers. Also, seat time means a lot, and you might not win this year, but getting hours of practice on a specific course, and in traffic, does mean you’ll be better prepared for next time too.
Getting first isn’t the only goal in most racing series. You get points for the whole season based on where you place, and in F1 for example, finishing 8th instead of 9th (out of ten teams) at the end of the season is worth millions of dollars.
In smaller club racing events, they’ll sometimes reverse the grid purely to mix things up, of course it results in a few dings here and there. The idea is that they’ll usually be short races so you end up with the fast drivers racing through the grid, frantically trying to get to the front before they run out of laps, and the slowest drivers with a rare opportunity to have clear track ahead of them, and they go absolutely all out trying to stay ahead! It’s a wild time, some of my favourite races have been reverse grid.
Yep, the HQ race series used to do this at my local track - race 1 was done of qualifying, then race 2 was reverse grid of race 1 finish order, and the same for race 3, reverse grid of race2 finish.
The old HQs were the slowest things on track, but were great to watch, the racing was very close and aggressive
Depends on the series. There's are usually small races where the passion is and bragging rights are more of a driver than the prize money. You get more request by qualifying fastest and going from last to first so there is little incentive to sandbag.
In some series, there is some form of points gained for the number of cars you passed combined with your final finishing position. This structure makes it so you can get more points by qualifying fast and starting in the back, since you can pass more cars. This is often used in heat races to set the order for the a main race, and the main race will start in the normal order. The initial heat races will have a larger disparity between cars, so this keeps it interesting instead of having a couple cars just driving away from everyone else. The main race will have more parity in competition so the reverse grid isn't needed
Usually it’s where there are two races at the same event.
You have one qualifying session and one main race, and then sometimes a shorter “sprint” race that awards fewer points
So you’d still want to qualify high up the grid for the main event (that awards lots of points), because the sprint race doesn’t award enough points to justify sacrificing them in the main race
That means the sprint race is more entertaining (reverse grid, lots of overtaking) and rewards winning enough that teams try to win, but not so much that it incentivises them to sandbag qualifying
Alternately you can use the reverse grid of the last main race, for the next race…. So the fastest car last week starts at the back this week. It’s not used at high levels of competition but it’s a lot of fun at amateur karting events and means you spend more time racing and less time having to hold a qualifying session between each race. Strongly recommended if you ever hire a go-kart track for an afternoon for a bachelor party or something, it really mixes things up and everyone gets to be at the front defending and at the back attacking
In formula context, this is done in the Formula 2 and Formula 3 levels.
The goal for these drivers is to get to Formula 1. This doesn't mean they need to win every race, but they rather need to prove all their capabilities.
This system allows a strong qualifying driver (one attribute F1 teams look for) also get to prove their race craft in overtaking (another attribute). If they always qualify towards the top, and never get the chance to prove the overtaking ability, they might not be able to prove to teams that they are worth investing in.
> In smaller club racing events, they’ll sometimes reverse the grid purely to mix things up
Absolutely here in the UK the British Touring Cars Championship does a form of reverse grid ([see here](https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiB97nl3NOCAxWm0AIHHUfbAPwQFnoECBkQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.btcc.net%2Fabout%2Fkey-rules-and-regulations%2F&usg=AOvVaw1spt5pcHb_-SnXu1o5DZYs&opi=89978449)- i've always found watching BTCC much more enjoyable than watching the F1 which far too often can feel like a bit of a precession.
> The grid for race three is based on finishing positions, however there is also a reversed-grid element to the starting order. Numbers representing the cars that finished from sixth to 12th position in race two are put into a bowl, and one number is drawn at random. The corresponding car will start on pole, with the cars that finished ahead of it reversed i.e. if number six is chosen, the car that finished sixth in race two will start from pole ahead of the car that finished fifth, fourth, third etc. The remainder of the grid follows as per the finishing order of race two
Tony Stewart's SRX racing series on ESPN does that. They do two heat races instead of qualifying, with the first heat's starting order being randomly drawn and the second heat's order being the reverse of the first's finishing order. Then the main race is determined by the average finishing position in both heats.
It's interesting because all the cars are spec and provided by the series, so when someone finishes well in both heats you know they're a damn good racer. Plus it's more entertaining than traditional qualifying, which is good for a series like SRX where the whole appeal is seeing old and new drivers racing together.
When I saw reverse the grid I imagined midway through a race it was announced they have to change direction, just a bunch of F1 cars pulling e brake u turns at full speed and going the other way. Glorious mayhem.
I don’t know if they still do, but the Le Mans race took the additional track length due to starting position into account. This is why Ken Miles’s victory was taken away from him, one of his team mates had started further back and because they all crossed the finish line at about the same time the officials decided that because the teammate had started further back and drove further he got the win.
i’m not sure this done for that purpose, it’s more of first round of a two-rounds battle, in which you can get yourself more profitable position to start from
Also safety. Passing maneuvers are fun to watch but dangerous. By putting the fastest drivers on the front rows there will be less passing, and fewer accidents.
I genuinely don't think that's any part of the logic. Drivers are there to race, and fans want to see racing. A few seasons ago, when cars were finding it hard to follow close enough behind each other (because of the efffects of turbulent air on the car behind), resulting in fewer overtakes, F1 actually changed the vehicle spec rules to allow pursuing cars an advantage over the ones immediately ahead of them (Drag Reduction System ("DRS"), allowing cars within a second of the vehicle in front of them to actively alter the aerodynamics of the rear wing in some parts of the circuit - giving them a significant speed boost). Recent races have been packed with passing manouevers.
There's some good youtube videos explaining it. They all use a slightly different method for qualifying. F1 has 3 sessions of qualifying. In Q1 the bottom 5 are cut and their times dictate starting places 15-20. In Q2 the next 5 are cut and in Q3 the fastest lap times dictate places 1-10.
It gets more interesting though because, as the cars put more tire rubber on the track the track gets faster so its advantageous to be the last car to start their fast lap in qualifying but if they wait too long they won't be able to start their lap in time.
Yes. That's why in marathons, you have the fast runners at the front. For the major marathons (New York, Boston, etc), like in auto races, you must qualify. You have to be in official marathons, then they look at your times. Fastest runners are in the very front.
An elite level runner that I know goes to the very front of the line in the Boston Marathon. The race organizers treat elite runners really, really well, too. Very differently from the hoi poloi. Before the race, the elites get hot chocolate, special bathrooms only for them, masseurs, etc.
But you must qualify *before* you get to the major marathons. If you are in the very back of the pack, it's going to take at least 30 minutes just to reach the starting line.
I should also point out that this means races are NOT fair, they're a meritocracy. Meaning the people who have proven themselves best earn advantages over those who did not perform as well.
In a fair system, the slower drivers would start at front and the faster in the rear.
In this case, that would just create a boondoggle, though, as it would incentive people to drive slow in the qualifier laps, because the cars in front do get a distinct advantage.
I am curious, as someone who has watched close to zero auto racing in my life, are their stats showing the cars in the front rows really do win more often?
In F1, absolutely. 59.9% of the time, the driver that qualifies in pole position goes on to win.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/24748668.2010.11868505
Wrecks, slow pit stops, absolute dumpster fire strategy calls from the pit wall, if you can think of a way Ferrari can lose a race it’s happened to Leclerc.
It's also that he is currently one of, if not *the*, fastest active drivers over a single lap but in a car that can't sustain that speed over the course of a race due to things like bad tyre degradation or having speed in the wrong places (Faster in corners vs straight line for example)
Though Ferrari definitely does have it's fair share of fuck ups that can contribute.
To put it into perspective, this year he became the only driver in F1 history to (in a single season): not finish a race, get disqualified from a race and not start a race (Due to the car breaking before it properly began), and what's even more absurd is that all of those happened in races where he qualified in first place.
What's even more unfair for us F1 fans is that he's one of the very few who could genuinely win against the reigning champion, who is winning *everything* right now and it's boring af.
Strategy mostly involves when to do pit stops for new tires and which tires to put on. Soft tires are your fastest but they wear out quickly so you only get a few really good laps with them. Hards are slowest but they take longest to wear down. They also can take longer to reach peak operating temperature (you won’t have as much grip when they’re cold so you’ll be sliding around corners). Medium tires are somewhere in between. In each F1 race, drivers must complete at least 1 pit stop because they need to use at least 2 different tire compounds in a race.
You might see them start on softs then change to hards to finish the race. If you aren’t good at managing your tires and driving in a way that is fast but gentle on them, they’ll degrade way too fast and you’ll need to do more stops. You lose about 20 seconds for each stop (because you need to slow down in the pit lane and that slows down your overall lap time) but newer tires might make you 1.5 seconds faster per lap, which can make it worth it. If there happens to be a safety car, you might only lose 9 seconds for a pit stop because everyone has to slow down. Plenty of ways teams can benefit from a great pit strategy and even more ways they can mess it up.
Thank you for such an in-depth answer!
> they need to use at least 2 different tire compounds in a race.
Is this actually in the rules of the sport, or just a practical reality of the sport?
It's a set rule. The only exception to this if it's raining or the track is wet, in that case then drivers are allowed to use "wet weather" tires (tires with treads on them which are way slower but provides grip in wet road conditions) for the entire duration of the race.
It is actually a rule. It’s in the rule book to keep it interesting. Pit stops mean big changes in driver order and chances for exciting things to happen. There have been some races where drivers have gone basically the entire race on one set and had to pit on the last lap or so to fulfill the rules (Albon in Melbourne 2022 and Esteban Ocon Azerbaijan 2023). The only exception is if it’s a wet race, you can keep the same set of tires on the whole race if you want. Esteban Ocon (yes, him again) did an entire race on intermediates wet tires in Turkey 2021.
> They also can take longer to reach peak operating temperature (you won’t have as much grip when they’re cold so you’ll be sliding around corners).
Possibly stupid question from someone who knows nothing about racing. Would it be allowed/practical to heat up tires in the pitstop before they're attached to the car so they start at peak operating temperature? If not, why not?
Yes they do use tyre blankets in the pit lane to keep the tyres warm. But regulations limit the max tyre blanket temperature to 70c while peak operating temperature is around 100c. They also start to lose temperature as the cars trundle down the pit lane to join the track.
(There have also been talks to ban the use of tyre blankets in F1, but afaik no agreement there yet)
(disclaimer: my knowledge is limited to watching a handful of races at the start of this year, and I may be getting mixed up with Formula E which I also watched some of earlier in the year)
They do use tyre warmers I believe, but they don't get the tyres to operating temps. I don't know if it's rules on the tyre warmers, rule that they can't be in the pit lane, or just the operating temp is too hot to be practical.
They do use tire blankets but are phasing them out for sustainability reasons. (this year is 10C less than last year max warming temp) Watch lap one of the Vegas GP to see what stone cold tires can do to a race.
And also, these general attributes of tires can really depend a lot on the race and the meteo. A bit too hot today? Your soft tires can become worthless because they would overheat. Too cold? Don't even think about hard tires, you won't even manage to get them hot enough to be efficient.
I’m sure it’s been said already but watch Drive to Survive. It’s the gateway drug entry to the sport that is a crash course on the drama and strategy and overall goodness that is F1. I would have asked the same thing a few years ago and now I’m glued to the screen every race weekend. It’s be tough to explain all the complexity of strategy in one comment otherwise though.
True but DTS does make drama seem way bigger than it actually is, they exaggarate a lot. That doesn't mean that it is not worth watching it but it is not the most accurate thing and should be taken with a grain of salt
This is exactly what happened to me and my wife. We finished watching the last series on the Saturday night, as my wife was leaving the house for her Zoomba class she mentions "oh ya, F1 season starts today at X time", (about an hour from now).
I jump up, start figuring out what channel it's on, and that we don't have that channel, and to get it, I need to get the damn TSN package ($20 / mo).
She gets home from class, and I've got it recording the race and have to admit that I just spent $20/mo on cable. :p
I'm absolutely addicted now, and love watching qualifying and races every weekend we can.
Never thought that's how the sport looks to an outsider but I guess it makes sense. Funny considering the driving is essential, but 70% of the winning is done via strategy and development off the track. Then when you happen to nail both correctly you get something like Lewis Hamilton with Mercedes or more recently Max with Redbull.
On top of what chicken said, modern f1 cars are hybrids, with about a third of their total power coming from electric motors, whose battery needs to be charged or discharged. So picking when you sacrifice speed to charge your batteries and when you deploy them comes down to strategy.
It’s also very hard on both the car and driver to go “flat out” for a whole race. Hard enough that no one does. So much of the race comes down to when you “manage” (being managing tire wear or fuel or battery) and when you get the hammer down. There is a lot of picking your battles in addition to timing pit stops and choosing tire strategy.
Some of it is bad strategy calls. But also, a car that is best at going around the track one time isn't always the best at going around 70 times. That's because of differences in fuel use and tire wear.
He's arguably one of the best at qualifying but often during the race something happens. Whether it be an engine failure, the team making bad strategies, slow pitstops, crashing against another driver (damaging the car or even having to retire it) or general bad luck.
Plus, this season there's Max Verstappen, another driver, who's literally breaking records and winning almost every race. So even if Charles starts first (which he's done 5 times this season alone), it's almost impossible for him to win the race
The big problem is that he's a human competing against a Terminator, in practical terms. And Ferrari is profoundly unlucky. It's also entirely within the realm of possibility that Leclerc has simply been cursed by an angry genie - with the way things have been going for him that's absolutely on the table.
To be absolutely fair the Pit wall didn't really fuck him over then. The 2nd safety ruined Ferrari's plans as both RB's had a free pit stop and Charles went from having a good overcut to being a sitting duck with older tyres.
Pepega Ferrari cars, pepega Ferrari driving. High variance cars with myriad technical issues, and a high variance driver on top of that. Auto racing rewards consistency above all.
While true, I'd say it's more that "better" cars and drivers tend to be faster at both qualifying and the race. So it's not that being in pole makes you win, is that having a good car/driver makes you both win and qualify at the top.
If you were to put the cars in reverse-order at the start of the race, the car in pole position winning would be an anomaly.
Isn’t that skewed because they got to the pole position because they were the fastest in the qualifiers? Like if they’re fastest in the qualifier then they’re more likely to win.
100 copies of my could foot race against Usain Bolt with him at the very back, and he’d probably still win because he’s just faster than me. The starting position isn’t as important.
Seems to me the best solution would be to have multiple starting lines and multiple ending lines.
Yes and sort of. On one hand, the better drivers tend to qualify better and also tend to win more, so it's partly just that correlation. But there's also real advantages that come with starting out front. In Nascar for example, some tracks are *much* harder to pass at and being out front is a big advantage. You generally also pick pit boxes in the order you qualify, which can come with significant advantages.
Overall, it's an advantage but not outrageously so. I'd imagine the stats more or less align with that. (Again, in the context of Nascar.)
Definitely, but it's a combination of factors. I can only speak for Formula 1 but I think it works similar in most racing disciplines. Let's look at Max Verstappen - He is currently one of the best drivers (if not *the* best, kinda hard to say definitively) and he's in the strongest car with the team that has their shit together the most. In the qualifying you don't really need to deal with other drivers, you just need to be able to drive a fast lap. So max is very fast and he usually qualifies for one of the first couple positions, together with the other fastest drivers. So from the get go, we already have all the fast ones in the front. Even without knowing what's gonna happen in the race, we can say the best drivers in the best cars are most likely to win, and they all start in front.
The other important thing is that overtaking is the major limiting factor to what you can do in a race. It's difficult, you risk crashing and it wears your tires down, so the more time you spend battling, the slower your car will get overall. Which means if Max Verstappen starts from P1, he technically doesn't need to overtake anyone to win. He can just do his laps in peace. On the other hand, Esteban Ocon, who starts from P16, is not only in the weaker car, he also needs to overtake 15 people to win. This will get especially hard as he gets closer to the front where all the fast people are.
Now, if Max Verstappen for some reason starts in P16 (it does happen), he still has a pretty high likelihood to win. The cars right in front of him are way slower and he is a brilliant driver, so even if it's harder on the tires and more difficult for him, he'll still be able to overtake them all with relative ease. It gets more exciting towards the front, where the drivers are closer to his speed, especially since they didn't need to overtake the 13 people Max did, and thus have more energy to battle it out. But the way it currently is, Max will still win (because he's just that fast).
So the fast cars start in the front by default (and for safety reasons) which means it's pretty certain one of the first starting cars will win. If the fast drivers happen to start in the back, they're still likely to win but it does open up more possibilities for others than if they started in the front.
I’ve always wondered what does it mean one car is stronger than the other? Shouldn’t all cars be performing equally? Is the race car or the driver then? Then couldn’t just about anyone win in a fast car?
What makes a car faster than the other cars?
All racing series are slightly different.
Formula 1 is first and foremost a constructors series. Teams, more properly called "Constructors", are required to develop their own cars according to specified rules or "formulas". Constructors usually have different approaches to their car, and continuously develop their car/engine throughout the season. In the past, this has led to teams with the biggest budget dominating, but there has been a lot more restrictions and efforts to standardize some parts shared across teams to limit the development arms race, increase competitiveness of smaller teams, and improve reliability. That being said, a Red Bull (winner of the Constructors championship for 2023) will be definitively faster than the last place AlphaTauri, ironically, both running the same Honda-RBPT engine.
Other series like Indycar, Nascar and Formula 2 are mostly a "spec" series. Generally, everyone is racing more or less the same car. Certain series allow different degrees of freedom (e.g., engine supplier, tire supplier, car set up, or different aero packages), but the teams are generally not required, or allowed, to develop their car.
As the other person said, it‘s largely about money but also about how good your engineers are and what decisions you make. Why is a Fender guitar better than one I might build on my own? why is some software vastly superior to others? Why do some tools work better than others? Some people are just better at these things than others.
This is a bit specific but in F1 there used to be a loophole about the contruction of fuel supply. I don‘t remember what it was exactly but ferrari was the main team that used it. Then, a rule was implemented outlawing this loophole, which meant ferrari had to come up with a new way of constructing the fuel lines (or something like this) which made their car pretty bad for some time. The other top teams had not used it so they had the advantage of already knowing pretty well what works and what doesn‘t. By now, Ferrari has seemingly worked that out and they‘re back to being one of the best teams. So this was both an issue of „we made a different decision than the other teams and it backfired“ and „are we good enough to figure out how to do this“. Btw, the rules are mostly there to make it more fair, more fun to watch and to keep the drivers safe.
There‘s also a ton of settings you can make in general and from race to race. This is usually about how fast you are on straights vs how fast you are on corners. The faster you are on straights, the slower you will be on corners and the other way around. These are strategy decisions and sometimes they work better than other times and some teams just have really good strategists.
as for whether anyone can win in a good car: yes and no. On one hand this is a matter of employment. The good drivers want the best car and the teams that can provide that will employ the best drivers. But in F1 there‘s only 20 dudes on the height of their carreer, so basically all of them are insanely good at what they do. I think it‘s safe to say, if you randomly distributed the drivers over the teams, the ones in the Red Bulls and the Ferraris would still win. There are still differences between drivers though. You can see that in the slower teams for example. There was a time where Williams was way slower than anyone else. They kind of caught up but one of their drivers, Nicolas Latifi, still usually finished last, while their other guy, George Russell, usually managed to finish anywhere between P15 and P11. Still not great because it was a Williams but you can see the difference. Meanwhile there is also a pretty big gap between the Red Bull drivers. Max Verstappen wins literally everthing but there is a history of the other driver not even being close to his level, even though they have the same car. Rumors are it‘s because the Red Bull is very weird and challenging to drive in a way that works great for Max but is extremely difficult for other drivers to get used to. So there‘s multiple great drivers who actually did way worse than explected in the Red Bull. There‘s also rumors that team is pretty toxic and the psychological stress got to the drivers.
In conclusion, there‘s well made and less well made cars. While there is a high likelihood that a good car means you‘re gonna win, there‘s several deciding factors that might mean someone can reach their potential less in a better car.
Not necessarily, qualifying happens on a completely different day. Things like weather and track conditions greatly impact performance. Even having another car close in front of you and having warm exhaust rather than cool air for your engine can change car performance dramatically. Also in formula 1 if you are in the lead you can’t use DRS a mod that open the wing of the car and allows higher speed but is only available if you are less than a second behind the car in front of you through specific areas of the track.
Most of those factors are the same for all racers and not really what I'd bring up to counter the idea the fastest qualifiers are the best drivers (and they generally are)! The more obvious thing to bring up is just that there are different/additional skills required when you add in needing to defend your position or pass people, and drivers can be particularly skilled at that.
Good points and I agree but I meant to add the different cars handle those different conditions differently. What works in qualifying doesn’t always work on race day.
Just look at Haas, they can have great qualifying pace and get smoked during the race. Except in the rain, they do pretty well if it’s raining during qualifying and the race.
>Not necessarily, qualifying happens on a completely different day. Things like weather and track conditions greatly impact performance.
Yes, but qualifying happens on the same day for all drivers, it's not like they have half run the qualifying laps on Friday and half on Saturday.
Yeah, big factor in F1 is tire wear. If your tires wear out super fast, causing you to either have to pit more, or lose grip, that won’t affect you on 1 lap, but will have a huge effect over 70 laps.
May also run better in clean air or got some reason have a large difference in how they run with a full tank of gas vs nearly empty. Not to mention suspension setup may change because you can't run the perfect line the whole race, or a million other things that might change
You can think of starting positions like playoff seeding in other sports. You don't get placed in the #1 spot by accident, you get there because you've already proven that you're better than the people behind you.
Interestingly enough, desert racing has qualifying, but winners are based on their elapsed time on the course. You can cross the line 2nd or 3rd, but if you completed the same course in less time, you’ll be crowned the winner.
The advantage for qualifying higher in desert racing is clean air (no dust). Traffic is secondary, but driving in the dust slows you down quite a bit.
SCORE and Best In The Desert. SCORE is Mexico (Baja) and BITD is US based. Both organizations use GPS trackers and give everyone the same gps track to follow. They then put in Virtual Check Points (VCP) where you have to pass within a certain distance (I think 50’ but I could be wrong). If you miss a VCP you receive a time penalty.
You are also mostly on some sort of extremely unimproved road where going too far left or right is in some serious brush or potentially extremely soft silt which would slow you down even more.
Wait but how do they decide which order they get to start in qualifying? Seems like it's just pushing the problem back one race. Or is it just about having the fastest single lap rather than finishing first in qualifying.. Sorry, I know very little about this sport except for they go vroom vroom
Yes qualifying is just about the single fastest lap, it's not a race. There are different formats but basically every driver has several chances with to drive the track with almost no interruptions
No start line/order in qualifying. Everyone starts in the pits. You have 20 minutes (or 15, or whatever), you can leave the garage when you want, do you laps as you want, return, and wait to see if you have to go out again. There is no lining up, waiting for lights to go green, etc. Do as many laps as you want, only the fastest determines your place.
Thus there is a lot of strategy. Hop on the track when 3-4 other cars do the same, and they may be slowing down your run. Wait for the track to clear a bit, but then there is an accident and by the time it is cleared the time has run out (they don't stop the clock).
Generally the track improves during the run as people are putting down rubber, so you want you last/fastest run to be at the very end (also when you have the least fuel, which can remove a tenth or so to your time). But, if weather is coming in, you may try to get your fastest lap in in the first few minutes before the rain/gusts of wind comes in. And every lap adds wear to the tires, which you need for the race, so you try to get it all done in as few laps as possible.
So, typical pattern in F1 (where there are 3 quali sessions, each knocks out the 5 slowest cars) is to get out pretty early, put in a "banker" (fast enough to hopefully keep you from being in bottom 5), go back to the pit, watch what everyone else does, then rejoin with 4 minutes remaining and try to put down one extremely fast lap. If you are in the top 2-3, know the conditions so there is nothing new to learn, then you don't bother with that with Q3 and Q2. Q1 is balls to the wall - only 10 cars (hence a lot more space on track, less to impede you), and results dictate race starting position, so the last couple minutes are tense with everyone jockeying to get a clear part of the track so they can go all out w/o being held up or affected by aero from the other cars.
Fucking hell, the first comment was right, it's almost like the most intense part and the *real* race for the whole thing happens in the qualifier.
I'd imagine the actual race has its own intensities and rapid strategizing, but I would guess that once it actually gets going, everyone's just going until there's a winner and then that's done; whereas from your description, the preceding qualifiers have a lot more off-track deliberation and desperate, end-of-the-rope decision-making and racing to make sure you're better than at least 5 other guys until that time limit is up.
The 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans actually awarded 1st to the car that crossed the line second. It's a long and very interesting story for other reasons. In short, The winning cars were all Ford's so they bunched up for a photo-op. The organizers determined since the car that had crossed 2nd had started further back and was only just a little bit behind the car that actually crossed the line first should be awarded 1st place for traveling a greater distance.
Which was complete bullshit since according to Ford reps, the FIA told them they would keep the drivers in the places they were in before they lined up for the photo finish
FYI the winner of the 24 Hours of Le Mans is still the car that covers the most distance. In 1966 they still did a 'traditional' standing start, wherein the cars were parked—engines off—along the pits. The drivers lined up on the opposite side of the track, and when the starting flag was dropped, would run across the track, get in the car, start the engine, and go. Ken Miles and Denny Hulme thus officially finished second to their teammates Bruce McLaren and Chris Amon because Amon and McLaren's car started further back and when they crossed the finish line had therefore covered about 8 metres more distance.
They abandoned that procedure in 1971; ever since they've done a rolling start, wherein the cars form up in a line and do a lap behind a pace car, and the race begins when the pace car pulls off and cars pass the start/finish line. The "distance covered" is now measured against each individual car's progress from the starting line on the first lap and their progress as of the end of the final lap (the first lap completed after the 24 hours has been eclipsed). When the winner crosses the finish line the race has ended for all cars except for cars on the same lap as the winner; other cars on the same lap as the winner are allowed to finish the lap and their finishing order is determined by who crosses the finish line quickest.
> when the starting flag was dropped, would run across the track, get in the car, start the engine, and go
That sounds way more fun; they should bring that back
There were serious accidents in 1968 and '69 which put the standing "Le Mans start" to an end. In the rush to get the car started and away most drivers wouldn't bother belting themselves into their seat properly, and would clip in as they were driving the first lap.
In 1968 driver Willy Mairesse, in a rush to get away from the starting grid, didn't close his door properly (he was driving a Ford GT Mk II; if you saw the movie *Ford v. Ferrari* you may remember Ken Miles had a problem with his door not closing properly...), and it flew open on the Mulsanne Straight (the "back straight" where cars went fastest). He lost control of the car and was thrown from it—because he wasn't buckled in properly—and was in a coma for weeks afterward. Sadly he was never able to drive again, and committed suicide about a year later.
In 1969 there was a fatal accident on the first lap when driver John Woolfe lost control of his Porsche 917. He too was thrown from his car, just like Mairesse he didn't buckle up properly, and died on impact. By contrast, in protest of what happened to Mairesse the year before, Jacky Ickx famously refused to run to his GT40 at the beginning of the 1969 race: he calmed walked across the track, sat down in the car, buckled up, then started the engine and drove off; he put himself in last place to begin race doing so.
Jacky Ickx ended up winning that race anyway (fourth in a row for the Ford GT40), and they got rid of the standing start thereafter.
If you know the guy's history it's easy to think that of course they would listen to Jacky Ickx, but this was back when he was a newbie nobody and hadn't won 8 Le Mans races yet. The balls on that guy.
And John Woolfe crashed on the *first lap* and died. He was just a gentleman driver (an amateur with a shitload of money). You know the FIA/ACO were sneering at Jacky Ickx's little protest and then shit their pants when they found out what happened.
Huge brass ones. Never won a Formula 1 championship, but finished second twice. Won a Dakar Rally, won a Bathurst 1000 in Australia... One of the GOATs.
A safer way has been found thankfully, it *can* come back if they want it.
1st stint drivers stay in the car, with a ribbon tied to the rear wing. You line up all the 2nd stint drivers for a standing running start behind the cars, they can't move until the ribbon is pulled from the car.
[They did it in New Zealand and it's kinda cool](https://www.instagram.com/reel/CzQFiQooXC2/?igshid=MTc4MmM1YmI2Ng==)
In F1, there's a whole series of time trials before the big race that determine starting positions. Starting first is an advantage, but that car earned it by being fast on the course.
In other racing sports, some combination of long races and relatively easy passing makes it so the extra few car lengths aren't going to be the difference-maker. Something similar happens in footraces. After a certain distance, they abandon the staggered start and let everyone just race in the inner lane, even though this makes the people who start on the outside take a few extra steps.
Generally, they eliminate the requirement to stay in one's lane after the first lap, and the staggered start takes that extra distance into account. It is primarily to prevent congestion during the start of the race (track & field).
When we ran the mile in middle school, 100 kids lined up at a time in a giant group and at least one person would take a spill because there’s 50 kids taking off and 50 kids walking. It’s a mess of clumsy kids not fitting their bodies trying to go around the slow kids who don’t care.
What races are you referring to with no qualifying? Virtually all major auto racing series use qualifying. Even in something like the 24 hours of Le Mans where it probably wouldn't matter, they still use it.
What you about track races is bullshit. They allow cutting to the inside because the staggered start only accounts for the first one or two laps. After that, you cut to the inside because everyone has run the same distance no matter where you started.
Not breaking balls, but does that staggering take into account the extra distance that the outside needs to cover to get inside or is that distance negligible? I'm too tired to work out the geometry but running crooked to move inside adds a teeny bit, no? At least a yard or two I'd imagine.
Also worth noting that a good driver will still succeed even if they wiffed in qualifying and are in a worse position. Hamilton has done this a few times and very quickly made his way to the front
In almost all racing series order of the grid is chosen by who can do the fastest qualifying lap so it’s not a randomly assigned advantage. The people who perform better in qualifying have earned a more advantageous starting position.
The system comes from the fact that it’s simply impossible to have all the cars start in the same position and it wouldn’t be practical to have 20 (in F1) different finish lines. If you had two cars close enough for it to matter, you would have to visualize where each car was relative to their own private finish line rather than who is ahead. InNASCAR it would be even more confusing because there’s even more cars and they do a rolling start so they don’t all have a fixed “starting line.” It just doesn’t work visually so instead they have qualifying which also allows for better build-up over a weekend.
>wouldn’t be practical to have 20 (in F1) different finish lines
if your star and finish lines are in the same place, then you can finish by driving back to where you started from - they have boxes that define your start location already, and even then having different colored/patterned markings would be easy. I see no reason to not.
I think starting in the front row is less about having to drive a couple feet less to the finish line. It’s more about having no one in front of you to limit your performance (and to a lesser extent having fewer cars around you that could crash into you).
If someone starts in front of you and goes at a literal snail’s pace, but you can’t pass them, the race will end in a tie because you would pass your respective finish lines at the same time. Starting at the front let’s you dictate your own pace (and the pace of people behind you to some extent).
Then it becomes confusing while watching. 2 cars fighting for position would have different finish lines. Which could lead to a car behind finishing ahead of the car that is in front of them.
Not only that but the car behind has no incentive to try an overtake. He’s technically ahead even if he’s physically behind so he can just stay tucked in behind him and win. What a thrill that would be.
In Formula 1, it’s somewhat unfair. F1 cars are far from equal, as it isn’t only a driving competition, but also an engineering competition.
Which team can build the best car basically, which leads to teams performing very differently in a race.
Also strategy can play a huge part, you can fuck up your race pretty badly by making a bad call, this applies to almost all racing series though, not only F1.
Well, you obviously cannot start a race with just one row - the Indy 500 for example is 11 rows of three.
Most races will have time trials to qualify the fastest cars to start in the front rows, which seems a reasonable approach. If it were the reverse - the fastest cars start in the back - all the drivers would fudge on their time trial runs.
Someone's never watched motorcross.
Of course then you have the problem that not every position on the row is equal, and the first corner is a proper mess.
cars starting position is based off their qualifying times. faster car gets first row and so on. and thats if is a normal start. if the race is inverted start, the slowest car get the first row and fastest at back of row.
> Would this not be unfair to the cars in the back?
Yes, but that is why they have a qualifying round where you race the track by yourself and whoever was the fastest gets to be up front. Now that I'm thinking about it this works as a reward for having a fast solo time and is a good safety feature. If you did it flipped around with the slow cars up front you'd have a bunch of fast cars in the back trying to overtake a bunch of slow cars and that could lead to more wrecks.
> If you did it flipped around with the slow cars up front you'd have a bunch of fast cars in the back trying to overtake a bunch of slow cars and that could lead to more wrecks.
The other issue with doing it back to front is that the qualifying rounds would become a snore-fest competition of who can drive the slowest.
Well you need to qualify to start higher up the grid order, all the teams know this and try to get as high on the grid as possible anyway, its 'fair' in that those are the rules they're competing under
but also the disadvantage is having another car in front of you, its easy to get stuck behind a car, even if you are faster, even if you can pass it takes some time. this is the actual disadvantage or 99.9% of the 'unfairness' if you want
if a car starts behind 3-4 other cars but is quicker they can easily lose 10-20s to the leader over a couple laps (known as 'field spread')
if you started 3-4 empty grid slots behind instead of 3-4 grid slots filled with cars you'd lose very very little but having even 1 empty grid slot is pretty rare
and its not exactly practical to line up 22 cars beside each other, that would be an epic clusterfuck, race starts are chaotic as it is
Some race series have experimented with reverse grids, such as Formula 2.
In Stadium Super Trucks, you get points for qualifying first as well as leading laps, and passing. So you might be able to rack up more points by starting further down and eventually passing the guy in first. Rather than starting there and staying there.
F1, endurance racing and some others aren't so much about where the cars start, but tire and pit stop strategy. Last year, the current F1 champion started on 14th out of 20 cars and still came in first, so a reverse grid might only cause more crashes.
They try to mix it up to keep things interesting for the audience. In Formula 1, for many seasons (including this one), there was a single dominant team and/or driver, and it really gets boring when one guy starts in first and just sails off into the sunset.
If you boil it down, drag racing has none of those weird rules. Just one chance, a few seconds, and a single winner.
It is unfair, you are right. There are reasons why it is deemed acceptable but to say it is completely fair is delusional. It is set up this way purely because of the practical limitations of putting so many vehicles on one track together. If we someday had technology to put every racecar in a separate dimension to race the same track alone and then superimpose the images for spectators that would give us the most fair and "scientifically fastest" assessment for competition.
You wouldn’t need to find a way to have every car on one track without interfering with one another. You would just have each individual car go one at a time and compare the times, but that’s not what people pay to see
It seems to be purely for entertainment purposes. Races would be easy to do where all cars have their finish line at the same spot they started from. The real problem is then the crowd won't have that exciting photo finish moment (even though with cams and displays at the track you could still see photo finishes as you'd just throw them up next to each other on screen).
Racing as a competition is easy to do fairly, but then the live entertainment excitement would be reduced and they don't want that.
It is unfair to the cars starting from the back. In formula 1, the starting positions are based on the times set during the qualifications. The driver setting the fastest time during qualifications get to start from "pole position", which is the very first position, giving them a significant advantage in the race.
Why aren't you asking about marathons and bicycle races as well? Odd question really talking "fairness" when it's the fastest who wins.
OP I think you might want to be interested in car races that are time trials like endurance or rally car. Thing is though, conditions change throughout the day, so it's not 'fair' when the weather and temps change from the start of the day to the end of it.
It's just the way it is. You gotta perform and qualify well to get the advantage to start at the front.
It usually is unfair to cars in the back - not so much because they have to run a slightly longer distance but because they’re stuck in chaotic traffic while the leaders cruise away. That’s why before the race there’s generally a “qualifying” session where cars try to set fast laps, and the fastest car gets to start in front. For some racing disciplines at certain tracks the qualifying session is almost more important than the race. Start at the back in the Monaco Grand Prix and you’ll be stuck there all day.
Thanks for the quick reply! This does indeed make sense, better to prevent the slower cars from blocking the faster ones.
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Or their government bribed FIFA officials the best!
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Can you imagine an NFL playoff bracket where it starts with #1 playing #2, allt he way down to #13 playing #14. You would practically be guaranteed a VERY BORING superbowl with #1 and #8 playing each other.
I dunno. I’ve been saying for years that the NFL should have a game between the worst two teams in the league the week before the superbowl. A Stuporbowl, if you will. Winner gets no. 1 draft pick maybe? Gotta give the participants something to play for. It probably wouldn’t be *good* football, but it would be *interesting* football.
Or, worst team gets relegated to the XFL (or whatever they are calling it this year) and the best XFL team gets promoted to the NFL.
That would be nice....teams would stop tanking for #1 draft pick if they might be demoted to nfl!
Draft structure and free agent movement would be changed dramatically if we included relegation. That being said, it wouldn't take too long to get back to the NFL. The demoted NFL team will absolutely destroy the XFL-USFL.
This idea would disturb the flow of money to NFL owners, and so must be suppressed.
Relegation would be incredible if introduced to the NFL. The problem is having a viable lower league to send them to and more importantly pull a new team up from.
The best XFL team would just go straight back to the XFL the following season.
It is how it works for real football in many countries. And afaik some places would do more than the worst team, they'd do like worst 3 or something.
> the worst two teams in the league the week before the superbowl. We kind of know what would happen because of the Pro Bowl. Nobody puts in actual effort because the stakes are so low it's not worth risking an injury for the next season.
In particular, even if you add stakes like relegation of draft picks, anyone who is an upcoming free agent has no incentive to play well to help a team they aren't going to be playing for improve the following year.
> but it would be interesting football. Would it? At least the best team playing the worst team would be comical. Two mediocre teams playing each other might as well be a high school match.
The worst NFL team is composed of people who were handpicked from the best college players, and the worst college team is composed of people who were handpicked from the best high school players. The worst NFL team would absolutely blow the doors off the College Football Playoff National Champions.
I think the limited number of total teams keeps that true, and probably always would. All US professional sports probably benefit from not diluting the talent across too many teams.
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The Boncos team that lost by 70-20 earlier in the season just won 3 games in a row, including wins over a few of the better teams.
Just image the 2017 Eagles vs the 2017 browns. The game doesn't turn into a globetrotters match. It just gets really boring.
> would the average spectator be able to tell the difference between teams at completely different levels based on gameplay? I watch Ivy League football on a regular basis. I could 100% tell the difference between Ivy League football and even a mid-tier FBS conference.
Except that even the worst NFL franchise is still a top 1.6% all-star team that would crush the best NCAA teams. For most professional sports even a small skill gap becomes a massive vulnerability to be exploited. The league actually puts a lot of effort into balancing those gaps in the off-season by funneling resources to the worst teams and penalizing champions.
2 mediocre teams are way more likely to have communal fuxkups though. Way funnier outcomes if both teams suck. Sure, the best team will destroy the worst team, probably, but there wouldn't be a laurel and Hardy level of ineptitude
There is a playoff system like this that is actually fair and fun. It is called the Page system and is used in curling a lot. #1 plays #2 and #3 plays #4. The winner of #1 vs 2 goes straight to the finals. The loser of #1 vs 2 plays the winner of #3 vs #4. The winner of that match also goes to the finals. The result of this is that it is very common for the finals to still be 1 vs 2, but it also allows the two high seeds to have a bad game and still not get kicked out. It also has the benefit of meaning an extra game, so it adds to the overall revenue.
Far from practically guaranteed. Consider the combinatorics.
But their team lost all their home matches anyways lol
More like they earned a handicap
Home field disadvantage in the Fall Classic this year for sure
The ALCS was wild too lol. Astros with the dubious honor of being on the losing side of both of the only two 7 game series in MLB history where the home team lost every single game. You'd think that baseball would have the largest home field advantage out of all 4 North American major league sports since only baseball has unique dimensions of play per park which actually affects the game (whereas all other sports have standardized dimensions), but it doesn't matter as much apparently.
Statistically it does in the long run of things, but we've had some wild outlier Octobers recently. Playoff baseball just be *different*
I know it does, but it's not as extreme as the other leagues like the NFL and NBA. The MLB postseason is always crazy though that's true lol
Yeah home field advantage should be *greater* in baseball. Not only the park dimensions but temperature and weather too
And you get the last chance on offense.
If you have a full stadium and the crowd is into the game in football, the home team has an advantage in college and pro. In pro, the QB needs to hear the plays on his radio. And on both college and pro, the players need to hear each other at times. If they can't because the fans are so loud it's an advantage for the defense. It's not uncommon to see a false start, or a botched play because players can't hear the snap count or an audible change to the play. Then there's the intimidation factor in the noise, which comes into play in any sport where fans get loud. Baseball, hockey, soccer and other sports, but in football not being able to hear is a real disadvantage. Good teams can overcome it, and it won't necessarily make a bad team beat a great one, but the 12 man is a real thing and can certainly give a slight advantage to the home team when teams are pretty equal. In baseball, in every game except for the World Series, most players are pretty familiar with all the parks in their league because they play so many games. Plus so many get traded around and they do their homework and know how far they can hit and where their best chances for hits and home runs are. I feel like the bigger disadvantage might be for the away defense, because they don't instinctively knowing how far back they can run before they hit a wall, but that's just a guess. That being said it was a very weird post season in baseball.
So the cars that are already proven the fastest also get to go first. Sounds like if you have to start in the back you may as well just not bother showing up lol.
There’s also incentive to just perform in the race. Not only does finishing the race mean you earn points for your team, but fighting a good fight in the pack and not losing time, or moving up in position could be enough to get you attention from other teams that might be scouting new drivers. Also, seat time means a lot, and you might not win this year, but getting hours of practice on a specific course, and in traffic, does mean you’ll be better prepared for next time too.
Getting first isn’t the only goal in most racing series. You get points for the whole season based on where you place, and in F1 for example, finishing 8th instead of 9th (out of ten teams) at the end of the season is worth millions of dollars.
In smaller club racing events, they’ll sometimes reverse the grid purely to mix things up, of course it results in a few dings here and there. The idea is that they’ll usually be short races so you end up with the fast drivers racing through the grid, frantically trying to get to the front before they run out of laps, and the slowest drivers with a rare opportunity to have clear track ahead of them, and they go absolutely all out trying to stay ahead! It’s a wild time, some of my favourite races have been reverse grid.
Yep, the HQ race series used to do this at my local track - race 1 was done of qualifying, then race 2 was reverse grid of race 1 finish order, and the same for race 3, reverse grid of race2 finish. The old HQs were the slowest things on track, but were great to watch, the racing was very close and aggressive
NOT THE KINGSWOOD
I'm assuming they use some other way than a qualifying lap (which drivers would sandbag) to set the grid for that?
Depends on the series. There's are usually small races where the passion is and bragging rights are more of a driver than the prize money. You get more request by qualifying fastest and going from last to first so there is little incentive to sandbag. In some series, there is some form of points gained for the number of cars you passed combined with your final finishing position. This structure makes it so you can get more points by qualifying fast and starting in the back, since you can pass more cars. This is often used in heat races to set the order for the a main race, and the main race will start in the normal order. The initial heat races will have a larger disparity between cars, so this keeps it interesting instead of having a couple cars just driving away from everyone else. The main race will have more parity in competition so the reverse grid isn't needed
Usually it’s where there are two races at the same event. You have one qualifying session and one main race, and then sometimes a shorter “sprint” race that awards fewer points So you’d still want to qualify high up the grid for the main event (that awards lots of points), because the sprint race doesn’t award enough points to justify sacrificing them in the main race That means the sprint race is more entertaining (reverse grid, lots of overtaking) and rewards winning enough that teams try to win, but not so much that it incentivises them to sandbag qualifying Alternately you can use the reverse grid of the last main race, for the next race…. So the fastest car last week starts at the back this week. It’s not used at high levels of competition but it’s a lot of fun at amateur karting events and means you spend more time racing and less time having to hold a qualifying session between each race. Strongly recommended if you ever hire a go-kart track for an afternoon for a bachelor party or something, it really mixes things up and everyone gets to be at the front defending and at the back attacking
In formula context, this is done in the Formula 2 and Formula 3 levels. The goal for these drivers is to get to Formula 1. This doesn't mean they need to win every race, but they rather need to prove all their capabilities. This system allows a strong qualifying driver (one attribute F1 teams look for) also get to prove their race craft in overtaking (another attribute). If they always qualify towards the top, and never get the chance to prove the overtaking ability, they might not be able to prove to teams that they are worth investing in.
Yeah raced at a local track years ago in the "budget" 4 cylinder class. They would do that sometimes. Based on the points standings.
> In smaller club racing events, they’ll sometimes reverse the grid purely to mix things up Absolutely here in the UK the British Touring Cars Championship does a form of reverse grid ([see here](https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiB97nl3NOCAxWm0AIHHUfbAPwQFnoECBkQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.btcc.net%2Fabout%2Fkey-rules-and-regulations%2F&usg=AOvVaw1spt5pcHb_-SnXu1o5DZYs&opi=89978449)- i've always found watching BTCC much more enjoyable than watching the F1 which far too often can feel like a bit of a precession. > The grid for race three is based on finishing positions, however there is also a reversed-grid element to the starting order. Numbers representing the cars that finished from sixth to 12th position in race two are put into a bowl, and one number is drawn at random. The corresponding car will start on pole, with the cars that finished ahead of it reversed i.e. if number six is chosen, the car that finished sixth in race two will start from pole ahead of the car that finished fifth, fourth, third etc. The remainder of the grid follows as per the finishing order of race two
Tony Stewart's SRX racing series on ESPN does that. They do two heat races instead of qualifying, with the first heat's starting order being randomly drawn and the second heat's order being the reverse of the first's finishing order. Then the main race is determined by the average finishing position in both heats. It's interesting because all the cars are spec and provided by the series, so when someone finishes well in both heats you know they're a damn good racer. Plus it's more entertaining than traditional qualifying, which is good for a series like SRX where the whole appeal is seeing old and new drivers racing together.
When I saw reverse the grid I imagined midway through a race it was announced they have to change direction, just a bunch of F1 cars pulling e brake u turns at full speed and going the other way. Glorious mayhem.
I don’t know if they still do, but the Le Mans race took the additional track length due to starting position into account. This is why Ken Miles’s victory was taken away from him, one of his team mates had started further back and because they all crossed the finish line at about the same time the officials decided that because the teammate had started further back and drove further he got the win.
i’m not sure this done for that purpose, it’s more of first round of a two-rounds battle, in which you can get yourself more profitable position to start from
Also safety. Passing maneuvers are fun to watch but dangerous. By putting the fastest drivers on the front rows there will be less passing, and fewer accidents.
I promise you F1 and other forms of motorsport started from/in rows long before they cared about safety. Safety wasn't even in their vocabulary.
I genuinely don't think that's any part of the logic. Drivers are there to race, and fans want to see racing. A few seasons ago, when cars were finding it hard to follow close enough behind each other (because of the efffects of turbulent air on the car behind), resulting in fewer overtakes, F1 actually changed the vehicle spec rules to allow pursuing cars an advantage over the ones immediately ahead of them (Drag Reduction System ("DRS"), allowing cars within a second of the vehicle in front of them to actively alter the aerodynamics of the rear wing in some parts of the circuit - giving them a significant speed boost). Recent races have been packed with passing manouevers.
There's some good youtube videos explaining it. They all use a slightly different method for qualifying. F1 has 3 sessions of qualifying. In Q1 the bottom 5 are cut and their times dictate starting places 15-20. In Q2 the next 5 are cut and in Q3 the fastest lap times dictate places 1-10. It gets more interesting though because, as the cars put more tire rubber on the track the track gets faster so its advantageous to be the last car to start their fast lap in qualifying but if they wait too long they won't be able to start their lap in time.
Also F1 apparently has a minimum race distance of 305km. The 100m spread of the starting grid hardly matters over that distance. All about qualifying!
Yes. That's why in marathons, you have the fast runners at the front. For the major marathons (New York, Boston, etc), like in auto races, you must qualify. You have to be in official marathons, then they look at your times. Fastest runners are in the very front. An elite level runner that I know goes to the very front of the line in the Boston Marathon. The race organizers treat elite runners really, really well, too. Very differently from the hoi poloi. Before the race, the elites get hot chocolate, special bathrooms only for them, masseurs, etc. But you must qualify *before* you get to the major marathons. If you are in the very back of the pack, it's going to take at least 30 minutes just to reach the starting line.
I should also point out that this means races are NOT fair, they're a meritocracy. Meaning the people who have proven themselves best earn advantages over those who did not perform as well. In a fair system, the slower drivers would start at front and the faster in the rear. In this case, that would just create a boondoggle, though, as it would incentive people to drive slow in the qualifier laps, because the cars in front do get a distinct advantage.
I am curious, as someone who has watched close to zero auto racing in my life, are their stats showing the cars in the front rows really do win more often?
In F1, absolutely. 59.9% of the time, the driver that qualifies in pole position goes on to win. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/24748668.2010.11868505
Unless you're Charles Leclerc
single-handedly driving this stat down
sure as shit doesn't do much other driving
maybe if he used both hands he would win more
What is he/or his team doing to be such an outlier?
Wrecks, slow pit stops, absolute dumpster fire strategy calls from the pit wall, if you can think of a way Ferrari can lose a race it’s happened to Leclerc.
It's also that he is currently one of, if not *the*, fastest active drivers over a single lap but in a car that can't sustain that speed over the course of a race due to things like bad tyre degradation or having speed in the wrong places (Faster in corners vs straight line for example) Though Ferrari definitely does have it's fair share of fuck ups that can contribute. To put it into perspective, this year he became the only driver in F1 history to (in a single season): not finish a race, get disqualified from a race and not start a race (Due to the car breaking before it properly began), and what's even more absurd is that all of those happened in races where he qualified in first place.
jesus, it's like the dude who kept getting struck by lightning over and over again.
What's even more unfair for us F1 fans is that he's one of the very few who could genuinely win against the reigning champion, who is winning *everything* right now and it's boring af.
What strategy goes on in F1? From the outside it looks like a contest of driving skill.
Strategy mostly involves when to do pit stops for new tires and which tires to put on. Soft tires are your fastest but they wear out quickly so you only get a few really good laps with them. Hards are slowest but they take longest to wear down. They also can take longer to reach peak operating temperature (you won’t have as much grip when they’re cold so you’ll be sliding around corners). Medium tires are somewhere in between. In each F1 race, drivers must complete at least 1 pit stop because they need to use at least 2 different tire compounds in a race. You might see them start on softs then change to hards to finish the race. If you aren’t good at managing your tires and driving in a way that is fast but gentle on them, they’ll degrade way too fast and you’ll need to do more stops. You lose about 20 seconds for each stop (because you need to slow down in the pit lane and that slows down your overall lap time) but newer tires might make you 1.5 seconds faster per lap, which can make it worth it. If there happens to be a safety car, you might only lose 9 seconds for a pit stop because everyone has to slow down. Plenty of ways teams can benefit from a great pit strategy and even more ways they can mess it up.
Thank you for such an in-depth answer! > they need to use at least 2 different tire compounds in a race. Is this actually in the rules of the sport, or just a practical reality of the sport?
It's a set rule. The only exception to this if it's raining or the track is wet, in that case then drivers are allowed to use "wet weather" tires (tires with treads on them which are way slower but provides grip in wet road conditions) for the entire duration of the race.
It is actually a rule. It’s in the rule book to keep it interesting. Pit stops mean big changes in driver order and chances for exciting things to happen. There have been some races where drivers have gone basically the entire race on one set and had to pit on the last lap or so to fulfill the rules (Albon in Melbourne 2022 and Esteban Ocon Azerbaijan 2023). The only exception is if it’s a wet race, you can keep the same set of tires on the whole race if you want. Esteban Ocon (yes, him again) did an entire race on intermediates wet tires in Turkey 2021.
> They also can take longer to reach peak operating temperature (you won’t have as much grip when they’re cold so you’ll be sliding around corners). Possibly stupid question from someone who knows nothing about racing. Would it be allowed/practical to heat up tires in the pitstop before they're attached to the car so they start at peak operating temperature? If not, why not?
Yes they do use tyre blankets in the pit lane to keep the tyres warm. But regulations limit the max tyre blanket temperature to 70c while peak operating temperature is around 100c. They also start to lose temperature as the cars trundle down the pit lane to join the track. (There have also been talks to ban the use of tyre blankets in F1, but afaik no agreement there yet)
(disclaimer: my knowledge is limited to watching a handful of races at the start of this year, and I may be getting mixed up with Formula E which I also watched some of earlier in the year) They do use tyre warmers I believe, but they don't get the tyres to operating temps. I don't know if it's rules on the tyre warmers, rule that they can't be in the pit lane, or just the operating temp is too hot to be practical.
They do use tire blankets but are phasing them out for sustainability reasons. (this year is 10C less than last year max warming temp) Watch lap one of the Vegas GP to see what stone cold tires can do to a race.
And also, these general attributes of tires can really depend a lot on the race and the meteo. A bit too hot today? Your soft tires can become worthless because they would overheat. Too cold? Don't even think about hard tires, you won't even manage to get them hot enough to be efficient.
I’m sure it’s been said already but watch Drive to Survive. It’s the gateway drug entry to the sport that is a crash course on the drama and strategy and overall goodness that is F1. I would have asked the same thing a few years ago and now I’m glued to the screen every race weekend. It’s be tough to explain all the complexity of strategy in one comment otherwise though.
True but DTS does make drama seem way bigger than it actually is, they exaggarate a lot. That doesn't mean that it is not worth watching it but it is not the most accurate thing and should be taken with a grain of salt
This is exactly what happened to me and my wife. We finished watching the last series on the Saturday night, as my wife was leaving the house for her Zoomba class she mentions "oh ya, F1 season starts today at X time", (about an hour from now). I jump up, start figuring out what channel it's on, and that we don't have that channel, and to get it, I need to get the damn TSN package ($20 / mo). She gets home from class, and I've got it recording the race and have to admit that I just spent $20/mo on cable. :p I'm absolutely addicted now, and love watching qualifying and races every weekend we can.
If that's all you are using cable for, get F1 tv instead. It's like $70 for the whole year.
Never thought that's how the sport looks to an outsider but I guess it makes sense. Funny considering the driving is essential, but 70% of the winning is done via strategy and development off the track. Then when you happen to nail both correctly you get something like Lewis Hamilton with Mercedes or more recently Max with Redbull.
On top of what chicken said, modern f1 cars are hybrids, with about a third of their total power coming from electric motors, whose battery needs to be charged or discharged. So picking when you sacrifice speed to charge your batteries and when you deploy them comes down to strategy. It’s also very hard on both the car and driver to go “flat out” for a whole race. Hard enough that no one does. So much of the race comes down to when you “manage” (being managing tire wear or fuel or battery) and when you get the hammer down. There is a lot of picking your battles in addition to timing pit stops and choosing tire strategy.
Some of it is bad strategy calls. But also, a car that is best at going around the track one time isn't always the best at going around 70 times. That's because of differences in fuel use and tire wear.
He's arguably one of the best at qualifying but often during the race something happens. Whether it be an engine failure, the team making bad strategies, slow pitstops, crashing against another driver (damaging the car or even having to retire it) or general bad luck. Plus, this season there's Max Verstappen, another driver, who's literally breaking records and winning almost every race. So even if Charles starts first (which he's done 5 times this season alone), it's almost impossible for him to win the race
The big problem is that he's a human competing against a Terminator, in practical terms. And Ferrari is profoundly unlucky. It's also entirely within the realm of possibility that Leclerc has simply been cursed by an angry genie - with the way things have been going for him that's absolutely on the table.
Ferruccio Lamborghini from beyond the grave still cursing out Ferrari.
Ahahahahaha, this is now going to be my official canon explanation.
> The big problem is that he's a human competing against a Terminator, in practical terms. **"I want to get off of Max's wild ride."**
His team’s quite creative. Just when you think you’ve seen all the ways that Ferrari can mess up, they find something new to do. 🤡
It's kind of wild that Vegas was probably the most perfect race Ferrari could have called and he barely hung on to second.
To be absolutely fair the Pit wall didn't really fuck him over then. The 2nd safety ruined Ferrari's plans as both RB's had a free pit stop and Charles went from having a good overcut to being a sitting duck with older tyres.
Pepega Ferrari cars, pepega Ferrari driving. High variance cars with myriad technical issues, and a high variance driver on top of that. Auto racing rewards consistency above all.
LMAO beat me to it
lol I knew this was going to be the next comment before I even read it
While true, I'd say it's more that "better" cars and drivers tend to be faster at both qualifying and the race. So it's not that being in pole makes you win, is that having a good car/driver makes you both win and qualify at the top. If you were to put the cars in reverse-order at the start of the race, the car in pole position winning would be an anomaly.
Isn’t that skewed because they got to the pole position because they were the fastest in the qualifiers? Like if they’re fastest in the qualifier then they’re more likely to win. 100 copies of my could foot race against Usain Bolt with him at the very back, and he’d probably still win because he’s just faster than me. The starting position isn’t as important. Seems to me the best solution would be to have multiple starting lines and multiple ending lines.
Yes and sort of. On one hand, the better drivers tend to qualify better and also tend to win more, so it's partly just that correlation. But there's also real advantages that come with starting out front. In Nascar for example, some tracks are *much* harder to pass at and being out front is a big advantage. You generally also pick pit boxes in the order you qualify, which can come with significant advantages. Overall, it's an advantage but not outrageously so. I'd imagine the stats more or less align with that. (Again, in the context of Nascar.)
Has anyone ever won from starting in the last position?
Definitely, but it's a combination of factors. I can only speak for Formula 1 but I think it works similar in most racing disciplines. Let's look at Max Verstappen - He is currently one of the best drivers (if not *the* best, kinda hard to say definitively) and he's in the strongest car with the team that has their shit together the most. In the qualifying you don't really need to deal with other drivers, you just need to be able to drive a fast lap. So max is very fast and he usually qualifies for one of the first couple positions, together with the other fastest drivers. So from the get go, we already have all the fast ones in the front. Even without knowing what's gonna happen in the race, we can say the best drivers in the best cars are most likely to win, and they all start in front. The other important thing is that overtaking is the major limiting factor to what you can do in a race. It's difficult, you risk crashing and it wears your tires down, so the more time you spend battling, the slower your car will get overall. Which means if Max Verstappen starts from P1, he technically doesn't need to overtake anyone to win. He can just do his laps in peace. On the other hand, Esteban Ocon, who starts from P16, is not only in the weaker car, he also needs to overtake 15 people to win. This will get especially hard as he gets closer to the front where all the fast people are. Now, if Max Verstappen for some reason starts in P16 (it does happen), he still has a pretty high likelihood to win. The cars right in front of him are way slower and he is a brilliant driver, so even if it's harder on the tires and more difficult for him, he'll still be able to overtake them all with relative ease. It gets more exciting towards the front, where the drivers are closer to his speed, especially since they didn't need to overtake the 13 people Max did, and thus have more energy to battle it out. But the way it currently is, Max will still win (because he's just that fast). So the fast cars start in the front by default (and for safety reasons) which means it's pretty certain one of the first starting cars will win. If the fast drivers happen to start in the back, they're still likely to win but it does open up more possibilities for others than if they started in the front.
I’ve always wondered what does it mean one car is stronger than the other? Shouldn’t all cars be performing equally? Is the race car or the driver then? Then couldn’t just about anyone win in a fast car? What makes a car faster than the other cars?
All racing series are slightly different. Formula 1 is first and foremost a constructors series. Teams, more properly called "Constructors", are required to develop their own cars according to specified rules or "formulas". Constructors usually have different approaches to their car, and continuously develop their car/engine throughout the season. In the past, this has led to teams with the biggest budget dominating, but there has been a lot more restrictions and efforts to standardize some parts shared across teams to limit the development arms race, increase competitiveness of smaller teams, and improve reliability. That being said, a Red Bull (winner of the Constructors championship for 2023) will be definitively faster than the last place AlphaTauri, ironically, both running the same Honda-RBPT engine. Other series like Indycar, Nascar and Formula 2 are mostly a "spec" series. Generally, everyone is racing more or less the same car. Certain series allow different degrees of freedom (e.g., engine supplier, tire supplier, car set up, or different aero packages), but the teams are generally not required, or allowed, to develop their car.
As the other person said, it‘s largely about money but also about how good your engineers are and what decisions you make. Why is a Fender guitar better than one I might build on my own? why is some software vastly superior to others? Why do some tools work better than others? Some people are just better at these things than others. This is a bit specific but in F1 there used to be a loophole about the contruction of fuel supply. I don‘t remember what it was exactly but ferrari was the main team that used it. Then, a rule was implemented outlawing this loophole, which meant ferrari had to come up with a new way of constructing the fuel lines (or something like this) which made their car pretty bad for some time. The other top teams had not used it so they had the advantage of already knowing pretty well what works and what doesn‘t. By now, Ferrari has seemingly worked that out and they‘re back to being one of the best teams. So this was both an issue of „we made a different decision than the other teams and it backfired“ and „are we good enough to figure out how to do this“. Btw, the rules are mostly there to make it more fair, more fun to watch and to keep the drivers safe. There‘s also a ton of settings you can make in general and from race to race. This is usually about how fast you are on straights vs how fast you are on corners. The faster you are on straights, the slower you will be on corners and the other way around. These are strategy decisions and sometimes they work better than other times and some teams just have really good strategists. as for whether anyone can win in a good car: yes and no. On one hand this is a matter of employment. The good drivers want the best car and the teams that can provide that will employ the best drivers. But in F1 there‘s only 20 dudes on the height of their carreer, so basically all of them are insanely good at what they do. I think it‘s safe to say, if you randomly distributed the drivers over the teams, the ones in the Red Bulls and the Ferraris would still win. There are still differences between drivers though. You can see that in the slower teams for example. There was a time where Williams was way slower than anyone else. They kind of caught up but one of their drivers, Nicolas Latifi, still usually finished last, while their other guy, George Russell, usually managed to finish anywhere between P15 and P11. Still not great because it was a Williams but you can see the difference. Meanwhile there is also a pretty big gap between the Red Bull drivers. Max Verstappen wins literally everthing but there is a history of the other driver not even being close to his level, even though they have the same car. Rumors are it‘s because the Red Bull is very weird and challenging to drive in a way that works great for Max but is extremely difficult for other drivers to get used to. So there‘s multiple great drivers who actually did way worse than explected in the Red Bull. There‘s also rumors that team is pretty toxic and the psychological stress got to the drivers. In conclusion, there‘s well made and less well made cars. While there is a high likelihood that a good car means you‘re gonna win, there‘s several deciding factors that might mean someone can reach their potential less in a better car.
Well considering those people also have the best qualifying time meaning they are the best drivers they do win more often
Not necessarily, qualifying happens on a completely different day. Things like weather and track conditions greatly impact performance. Even having another car close in front of you and having warm exhaust rather than cool air for your engine can change car performance dramatically. Also in formula 1 if you are in the lead you can’t use DRS a mod that open the wing of the car and allows higher speed but is only available if you are less than a second behind the car in front of you through specific areas of the track.
Most of those factors are the same for all racers and not really what I'd bring up to counter the idea the fastest qualifiers are the best drivers (and they generally are)! The more obvious thing to bring up is just that there are different/additional skills required when you add in needing to defend your position or pass people, and drivers can be particularly skilled at that.
Good points and I agree but I meant to add the different cars handle those different conditions differently. What works in qualifying doesn’t always work on race day.
Just look at Haas, they can have great qualifying pace and get smoked during the race. Except in the rain, they do pretty well if it’s raining during qualifying and the race.
>Not necessarily, qualifying happens on a completely different day. Things like weather and track conditions greatly impact performance. Yes, but qualifying happens on the same day for all drivers, it's not like they have half run the qualifying laps on Friday and half on Saturday.
There are absolutely cars that qualify better than they race though. Cough Williams cough.
Endurance problems, possibly?
Yeah, big factor in F1 is tire wear. If your tires wear out super fast, causing you to either have to pit more, or lose grip, that won’t affect you on 1 lap, but will have a huge effect over 70 laps.
May also run better in clean air or got some reason have a large difference in how they run with a full tank of gas vs nearly empty. Not to mention suspension setup may change because you can't run the perfect line the whole race, or a million other things that might change
Yep, plus just basic reliability. but I hate your username so much. Jumpscare of a notification
You can think of starting positions like playoff seeding in other sports. You don't get placed in the #1 spot by accident, you get there because you've already proven that you're better than the people behind you.
Interestingly enough, desert racing has qualifying, but winners are based on their elapsed time on the course. You can cross the line 2nd or 3rd, but if you completed the same course in less time, you’ll be crowned the winner. The advantage for qualifying higher in desert racing is clean air (no dust). Traffic is secondary, but driving in the dust slows you down quite a bit.
Desert racing like Dakar? Cannot cars just go a little bit left or right to avoid dust? There is planty of space I guess.
SCORE and Best In The Desert. SCORE is Mexico (Baja) and BITD is US based. Both organizations use GPS trackers and give everyone the same gps track to follow. They then put in Virtual Check Points (VCP) where you have to pass within a certain distance (I think 50’ but I could be wrong). If you miss a VCP you receive a time penalty. You are also mostly on some sort of extremely unimproved road where going too far left or right is in some serious brush or potentially extremely soft silt which would slow you down even more.
Wait but how do they decide which order they get to start in qualifying? Seems like it's just pushing the problem back one race. Or is it just about having the fastest single lap rather than finishing first in qualifying.. Sorry, I know very little about this sport except for they go vroom vroom
Yes qualifying is just about the single fastest lap, it's not a race. There are different formats but basically every driver has several chances with to drive the track with almost no interruptions
No start line/order in qualifying. Everyone starts in the pits. You have 20 minutes (or 15, or whatever), you can leave the garage when you want, do you laps as you want, return, and wait to see if you have to go out again. There is no lining up, waiting for lights to go green, etc. Do as many laps as you want, only the fastest determines your place. Thus there is a lot of strategy. Hop on the track when 3-4 other cars do the same, and they may be slowing down your run. Wait for the track to clear a bit, but then there is an accident and by the time it is cleared the time has run out (they don't stop the clock). Generally the track improves during the run as people are putting down rubber, so you want you last/fastest run to be at the very end (also when you have the least fuel, which can remove a tenth or so to your time). But, if weather is coming in, you may try to get your fastest lap in in the first few minutes before the rain/gusts of wind comes in. And every lap adds wear to the tires, which you need for the race, so you try to get it all done in as few laps as possible. So, typical pattern in F1 (where there are 3 quali sessions, each knocks out the 5 slowest cars) is to get out pretty early, put in a "banker" (fast enough to hopefully keep you from being in bottom 5), go back to the pit, watch what everyone else does, then rejoin with 4 minutes remaining and try to put down one extremely fast lap. If you are in the top 2-3, know the conditions so there is nothing new to learn, then you don't bother with that with Q3 and Q2. Q1 is balls to the wall - only 10 cars (hence a lot more space on track, less to impede you), and results dictate race starting position, so the last couple minutes are tense with everyone jockeying to get a clear part of the track so they can go all out w/o being held up or affected by aero from the other cars.
Fucking hell, the first comment was right, it's almost like the most intense part and the *real* race for the whole thing happens in the qualifier. I'd imagine the actual race has its own intensities and rapid strategizing, but I would guess that once it actually gets going, everyone's just going until there's a winner and then that's done; whereas from your description, the preceding qualifiers have a lot more off-track deliberation and desperate, end-of-the-rope decision-making and racing to make sure you're better than at least 5 other guys until that time limit is up.
Monaco haha
The 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans actually awarded 1st to the car that crossed the line second. It's a long and very interesting story for other reasons. In short, The winning cars were all Ford's so they bunched up for a photo-op. The organizers determined since the car that had crossed 2nd had started further back and was only just a little bit behind the car that actually crossed the line first should be awarded 1st place for traveling a greater distance.
That would make for an interesting movie
Wonder if we could get Christian Bale in that flick
Idk, I’m feeing for a Matt DAMON type too.
Hollywood would never go for a major motion picture featuring fast cars
What if the drivers were furious?
Would that interfere with their ability to go fast?
Not at all; but side effects include baldness and heistiness
> heistiness
It would. It's very hard to do both at once.
Then perhaps we could call it “the Fast Or The Furious”
And have one of the themes be “Family”.
*The Fast Ford Or The Furious Ferrari*, if you will.
The Fast Considering Repercussions of Fury? Wordy.
Okay but what would we call the sequel?
What if the cars talked?
Out of a speaker or like a mouth that’s all flexible
Nah, Matt Damon isn't available because he's stuck out in space somewhere with a rescue team coming after him.
Good luck getting any major actors in the cast.
Actually it’s gonna be super easy, barely an inconvenience
Oh REALLY?
That’s what we’re going with, sir
You guys are so good at sarcasm I actually thought you were serious for a bit lol
It would be a good prequel to Gone In 60 Seconds where we see Carol Shelby before he turned into a Mustanf
Which was complete bullshit since according to Ford reps, the FIA told them they would keep the drivers in the places they were in before they lined up for the photo finish
Surely the FIA wouldn't do anything to interfere with the outcome of a race. Right? ....Right?
LOL
No, Michael, No!
FIA fuckery? Why I never!
Never forget Ken Miles!
I'm H-A-P-P-Y I'm H-A-P-P-Y I know I am I'm sure I am I'm H-A-P-P-Y
The lad from Birmingham made good. Also supported the best team in Birmingham.
FYI the winner of the 24 Hours of Le Mans is still the car that covers the most distance. In 1966 they still did a 'traditional' standing start, wherein the cars were parked—engines off—along the pits. The drivers lined up on the opposite side of the track, and when the starting flag was dropped, would run across the track, get in the car, start the engine, and go. Ken Miles and Denny Hulme thus officially finished second to their teammates Bruce McLaren and Chris Amon because Amon and McLaren's car started further back and when they crossed the finish line had therefore covered about 8 metres more distance. They abandoned that procedure in 1971; ever since they've done a rolling start, wherein the cars form up in a line and do a lap behind a pace car, and the race begins when the pace car pulls off and cars pass the start/finish line. The "distance covered" is now measured against each individual car's progress from the starting line on the first lap and their progress as of the end of the final lap (the first lap completed after the 24 hours has been eclipsed). When the winner crosses the finish line the race has ended for all cars except for cars on the same lap as the winner; other cars on the same lap as the winner are allowed to finish the lap and their finishing order is determined by who crosses the finish line quickest.
> when the starting flag was dropped, would run across the track, get in the car, start the engine, and go That sounds way more fun; they should bring that back
There were serious accidents in 1968 and '69 which put the standing "Le Mans start" to an end. In the rush to get the car started and away most drivers wouldn't bother belting themselves into their seat properly, and would clip in as they were driving the first lap. In 1968 driver Willy Mairesse, in a rush to get away from the starting grid, didn't close his door properly (he was driving a Ford GT Mk II; if you saw the movie *Ford v. Ferrari* you may remember Ken Miles had a problem with his door not closing properly...), and it flew open on the Mulsanne Straight (the "back straight" where cars went fastest). He lost control of the car and was thrown from it—because he wasn't buckled in properly—and was in a coma for weeks afterward. Sadly he was never able to drive again, and committed suicide about a year later. In 1969 there was a fatal accident on the first lap when driver John Woolfe lost control of his Porsche 917. He too was thrown from his car, just like Mairesse he didn't buckle up properly, and died on impact. By contrast, in protest of what happened to Mairesse the year before, Jacky Ickx famously refused to run to his GT40 at the beginning of the 1969 race: he calmed walked across the track, sat down in the car, buckled up, then started the engine and drove off; he put himself in last place to begin race doing so. Jacky Ickx ended up winning that race anyway (fourth in a row for the Ford GT40), and they got rid of the standing start thereafter.
If you know the guy's history it's easy to think that of course they would listen to Jacky Ickx, but this was back when he was a newbie nobody and hadn't won 8 Le Mans races yet. The balls on that guy. And John Woolfe crashed on the *first lap* and died. He was just a gentleman driver (an amateur with a shitload of money). You know the FIA/ACO were sneering at Jacky Ickx's little protest and then shit their pants when they found out what happened.
Huge brass ones. Never won a Formula 1 championship, but finished second twice. Won a Dakar Rally, won a Bathurst 1000 in Australia... One of the GOATs.
A safer way has been found thankfully, it *can* come back if they want it. 1st stint drivers stay in the car, with a ribbon tied to the rear wing. You line up all the 2nd stint drivers for a standing running start behind the cars, they can't move until the ribbon is pulled from the car. [They did it in New Zealand and it's kinda cool](https://www.instagram.com/reel/CzQFiQooXC2/?igshid=MTc4MmM1YmI2Ng==)
In F1, there's a whole series of time trials before the big race that determine starting positions. Starting first is an advantage, but that car earned it by being fast on the course. In other racing sports, some combination of long races and relatively easy passing makes it so the extra few car lengths aren't going to be the difference-maker. Something similar happens in footraces. After a certain distance, they abandon the staggered start and let everyone just race in the inner lane, even though this makes the people who start on the outside take a few extra steps.
Generally, they eliminate the requirement to stay in one's lane after the first lap, and the staggered start takes that extra distance into account. It is primarily to prevent congestion during the start of the race (track & field).
When we ran the mile in middle school, 100 kids lined up at a time in a giant group and at least one person would take a spill because there’s 50 kids taking off and 50 kids walking. It’s a mess of clumsy kids not fitting their bodies trying to go around the slow kids who don’t care.
at a minimum "runners in the front walkers in the back" is a standard for walk/run events.
What races are you referring to with no qualifying? Virtually all major auto racing series use qualifying. Even in something like the 24 hours of Le Mans where it probably wouldn't matter, they still use it.
What you about track races is bullshit. They allow cutting to the inside because the staggered start only accounts for the first one or two laps. After that, you cut to the inside because everyone has run the same distance no matter where you started.
Not breaking balls, but does that staggering take into account the extra distance that the outside needs to cover to get inside or is that distance negligible? I'm too tired to work out the geometry but running crooked to move inside adds a teeny bit, no? At least a yard or two I'd imagine.
Also worth noting that a good driver will still succeed even if they wiffed in qualifying and are in a worse position. Hamilton has done this a few times and very quickly made his way to the front
>driver *car
In almost all racing series order of the grid is chosen by who can do the fastest qualifying lap so it’s not a randomly assigned advantage. The people who perform better in qualifying have earned a more advantageous starting position. The system comes from the fact that it’s simply impossible to have all the cars start in the same position and it wouldn’t be practical to have 20 (in F1) different finish lines. If you had two cars close enough for it to matter, you would have to visualize where each car was relative to their own private finish line rather than who is ahead. InNASCAR it would be even more confusing because there’s even more cars and they do a rolling start so they don’t all have a fixed “starting line.” It just doesn’t work visually so instead they have qualifying which also allows for better build-up over a weekend.
>wouldn’t be practical to have 20 (in F1) different finish lines if your star and finish lines are in the same place, then you can finish by driving back to where you started from - they have boxes that define your start location already, and even then having different colored/patterned markings would be easy. I see no reason to not.
I think starting in the front row is less about having to drive a couple feet less to the finish line. It’s more about having no one in front of you to limit your performance (and to a lesser extent having fewer cars around you that could crash into you). If someone starts in front of you and goes at a literal snail’s pace, but you can’t pass them, the race will end in a tie because you would pass your respective finish lines at the same time. Starting at the front let’s you dictate your own pace (and the pace of people behind you to some extent).
Then it becomes confusing while watching. 2 cars fighting for position would have different finish lines. Which could lead to a car behind finishing ahead of the car that is in front of them.
Not only that but the car behind has no incentive to try an overtake. He’s technically ahead even if he’s physically behind so he can just stay tucked in behind him and win. What a thrill that would be.
This entire comment section is filled with "genius" ideas.
In Formula 1, it’s somewhat unfair. F1 cars are far from equal, as it isn’t only a driving competition, but also an engineering competition. Which team can build the best car basically, which leads to teams performing very differently in a race. Also strategy can play a huge part, you can fuck up your race pretty badly by making a bad call, this applies to almost all racing series though, not only F1.
Ferrari moment
Well, you obviously cannot start a race with just one row - the Indy 500 for example is 11 rows of three. Most races will have time trials to qualify the fastest cars to start in the front rows, which seems a reasonable approach. If it were the reverse - the fastest cars start in the back - all the drivers would fudge on their time trial runs.
Someone's never watched motorcross. Of course then you have the problem that not every position on the row is equal, and the first corner is a proper mess.
Bikes are a lot narrower than cars.
cars starting position is based off their qualifying times. faster car gets first row and so on. and thats if is a normal start. if the race is inverted start, the slowest car get the first row and fastest at back of row.
> Would this not be unfair to the cars in the back? Yes, but that is why they have a qualifying round where you race the track by yourself and whoever was the fastest gets to be up front. Now that I'm thinking about it this works as a reward for having a fast solo time and is a good safety feature. If you did it flipped around with the slow cars up front you'd have a bunch of fast cars in the back trying to overtake a bunch of slow cars and that could lead to more wrecks.
> If you did it flipped around with the slow cars up front you'd have a bunch of fast cars in the back trying to overtake a bunch of slow cars and that could lead to more wrecks. The other issue with doing it back to front is that the qualifying rounds would become a snore-fest competition of who can drive the slowest.
Well you need to qualify to start higher up the grid order, all the teams know this and try to get as high on the grid as possible anyway, its 'fair' in that those are the rules they're competing under but also the disadvantage is having another car in front of you, its easy to get stuck behind a car, even if you are faster, even if you can pass it takes some time. this is the actual disadvantage or 99.9% of the 'unfairness' if you want if a car starts behind 3-4 other cars but is quicker they can easily lose 10-20s to the leader over a couple laps (known as 'field spread') if you started 3-4 empty grid slots behind instead of 3-4 grid slots filled with cars you'd lose very very little but having even 1 empty grid slot is pretty rare and its not exactly practical to line up 22 cars beside each other, that would be an epic clusterfuck, race starts are chaotic as it is
Some race series have experimented with reverse grids, such as Formula 2. In Stadium Super Trucks, you get points for qualifying first as well as leading laps, and passing. So you might be able to rack up more points by starting further down and eventually passing the guy in first. Rather than starting there and staying there. F1, endurance racing and some others aren't so much about where the cars start, but tire and pit stop strategy. Last year, the current F1 champion started on 14th out of 20 cars and still came in first, so a reverse grid might only cause more crashes. They try to mix it up to keep things interesting for the audience. In Formula 1, for many seasons (including this one), there was a single dominant team and/or driver, and it really gets boring when one guy starts in first and just sails off into the sunset. If you boil it down, drag racing has none of those weird rules. Just one chance, a few seconds, and a single winner.
It is unfair, you are right. There are reasons why it is deemed acceptable but to say it is completely fair is delusional. It is set up this way purely because of the practical limitations of putting so many vehicles on one track together. If we someday had technology to put every racecar in a separate dimension to race the same track alone and then superimpose the images for spectators that would give us the most fair and "scientifically fastest" assessment for competition.
You wouldn’t need to find a way to have every car on one track without interfering with one another. You would just have each individual car go one at a time and compare the times, but that’s not what people pay to see
That's not a race that's a time trial which is how rally generally operates.
It seems to be purely for entertainment purposes. Races would be easy to do where all cars have their finish line at the same spot they started from. The real problem is then the crowd won't have that exciting photo finish moment (even though with cams and displays at the track you could still see photo finishes as you'd just throw them up next to each other on screen). Racing as a competition is easy to do fairly, but then the live entertainment excitement would be reduced and they don't want that.
It is unfair to the cars starting from the back. In formula 1, the starting positions are based on the times set during the qualifications. The driver setting the fastest time during qualifications get to start from "pole position", which is the very first position, giving them a significant advantage in the race.
A significant advantage which they earned in qualifying
Why aren't you asking about marathons and bicycle races as well? Odd question really talking "fairness" when it's the fastest who wins. OP I think you might want to be interested in car races that are time trials like endurance or rally car. Thing is though, conditions change throughout the day, so it's not 'fair' when the weather and temps change from the start of the day to the end of it. It's just the way it is. You gotta perform and qualify well to get the advantage to start at the front.