Monaco, monaco. What are they feeding you? Monaco, Monaco. It’s not your fault.
Or is it? You see, not only does Formula 1 keep coming
to Monaco every year that we don’t have a global pandemic, but it uses terms such
as ‘jewel in the crown’ and ‘a highlight of the year’ to describe the Monaco event.
And yet. It’s not, is it? It’s a bit rubbish. And kind of boring. So what can we do about
it? I’m here to come up with some crazy ideas
just to get the ball rolling. Because I think crazy ideas is exactly what we need. But first!
The news! And this just in:
People do want to know what’s going on in the world but they are tired of slogging through
traditional news cause it’s drier Oscar Wilde in the Atacama Desert drinking a Chablis
from a sandpaper cup that’s actually empty Avid News-Coveter Rope Otter has abandoned
traditional news, calling it “The biggest snorefest of trumped worditude that made me
yawn so hard a bee flew into my mouth and it was a queen bee and now there is an entire
hive in my mouth, please send help” So as you can see - the old ways just aren’t
cutting it. But along comes Morning Brew, a new way to
start your day with witty, relevant and informative takes on the daily updates in business, finance
and technology. This week I learned Vimeo went public on the
New York Stock Exchange as part of a new strategy to differentiate itself from YouTube, with
fascinating results over the last year. You can subscribe for free in just a few seconds
and get a relevant, succinct, punchily written newsletter in your inbox every morning. And
why wouldn’t you? I’m being told viewers can click the link
in the description to subscribe right now! Right now!
And now, back to chainbear with the sport
Thanks to our sponsor there. Right - Monaco, then!
First, the good: it’s unique in that it’s a genuinely brilliant track in terms of derring-do,
the actual landscape and the very limits of risk, challenge and opportunity it provides.
It’s a beautiful setting carved out of the mediterranean coast, with gorgeous buildings
and a scary ribbon of track with real elevation change and barely a 90 degree turn in sight
that dares you to kiss every barrier on the way around.
And as such, qualifying is probably the best Saturday of the year. Monaco is a weekend
for qualifying. Go as fast as you can without crashing and ruining your whole weekend. In
a car that isn’t really designed to do it because no other track is like this one. It’s
brilliant. But as Formula 1 itself keeps on saying, everything
is about the Sunday. That’s the main event. That’s what we’re all building towards.
They emphasise that over and over when discussing sprint qualifying, that any sprint races cannot
be allowed to overshadow the main race. So with that in mind, we can’t just say
“enjoy Monaco for the Saturday; the Sunday isn’t important.” That’s not what F1
is supposed to be about. So how do we make Sunday fun. By breaking
the mould. Hard. Crazy idea 1: Super Qualifying Sunday
Ok here’s what you do. Forget a normal race. Racing is a procession, no one can overtake.
Just bin that as an idea. Monaco Sundays will be something new.
On Saturday we do one shot qualifying. Monaco is the best place for that, so we can watch
every single car tackle every single spine tingling corner in their one and only attempt
to secure a fast lap time. We just send cars out one by one. That’s
it. One shot. That’s all you get. Like we used to do for a few years at the beginning
of the century. But then comes Super Qualifying Sunday. In
which every car gets one hour to set the fastest lap they can manage. Exceeeeept - it’s staggered
by two minute increments. With the assumption that the track with improve
across the course of the session, the first car to go out will be the slowest car on Saturday.
That driver can head out onto track as soon as the session begins.
They can set a laptimes whenever they want, but once 60 minutes are up, their session
is over. The second slowest car goes second, and they
are released from 2 minutes on the clock. And they can go until 62 minutes on the clock.
The third car starts from 4 minutes and goes until 64 minutes and so on until the fastest
car on Sunday leaves at the 38 minute mark until the one hour 38 minute mark.
So everyone gets an hour, but each person gets a slightly different hour with slight
advantage being given the better you did on Saturday.
Lots of cars on track, but it’s all about fastest laps, not overtaking, which is next
to impossible. Ways to improve this further - you have to
score a best aggregate time from 3 laps from each 20 minute subsection of your allotted
hour. So you can’t sit in the garage, you’ve got to be out there regularly trying to get
3 hot laps in in 3 windows. This might be a little hard to follow, but
with the staggered runs, drivers will be locking in their laps for each section one by one.
And with the right graphics, we can see just what laps are needed to come out on top.
It’s bonkers but it’ll be exciting and frustrating and weird. AND it’ll be a test
of Monaco prowess. Crazy Idea 2: The Joker Lap.
Ok, so in World Rally Cross they run a format of short races of about 5 laps around a short
course with the rule that ONE of the laps, called the Joker Lap, must take an alternate
allocated route around part of the circuit, which is a little bit longer, slower or trickier
to navigate. You can take this joker lap on any of your
laps as long as you do it once, opening up strategy opportunities to essentially run
and undercut or overcut on your rivals. So what if we added a joker section to the
Monaco track. Maybe here by using a roundabout just before the entrance to the Tunnel?
And instead of having to do the joker route once, maybe they have to do it once every
six laps? OR maybe they have to do it ten times over the whole race, whenever they wish,
to add a deeper strategic element to the whole thing.
If you’re stuck behind a rival that you’re faster than, maybe you take the joker route
to give yourself a bit of space, catch back up to them, then take the joker again to give
yourself space, then recatch them. This way you’re still right behind them but know
you’ve got two jokers on them. But of course you run the risk a rival might
pit while you’ve jokered yourself out of range - so there’s risk and reward at play.
The idea with bringing the joker into play is to allow drivers to push, and make a difference
against their rivals in ways that they currently can’t because they are stuck in an endless
queue. What this does is essentially give them more
pitstop-like opportunities to set hot sectors and make up time to the cars they’re up
against. So this was the seed of an idea. But we can
do better. Crazy Idea 3: The Mega Joker
OK so instead of some dinky little alternative route what if we actually give them a real
alternate route to follow. So as the cars go up the hill from Sainte
Devote, the normal route would have them take the fast left hander through Massenet.
OR they could take the mega joker run into a tighter left hander up Avenue Princess Alice,
making their way to Boulevard Princess Charlotte before wiggling their way to rejoin the main
route into Mirabeau. Maybe they could call it the Two Princesses route.
[#Spin Doctors:Two Princes] Obviously you’d need to work in some lane
divisions to make the separation and rejoining safe, as with pitlanes and other safety features
but imagine it for a second. Let’s say you have to do this alternate
route ten times a race. It’s got new characteristics: a long fast section down Princess Charlotte,
perhaps an overtaking spot or two. It’s a way longer route than the main track
past the casino so taking it will lose you time, same as taking a pitstop does. But just
as with taking a pitstop - everyone has to do it so it’s also an opportunity to make
up time. Can you use it to your advantage to come out on top or will you be cruelly
undercut? And if you’re undercut through the mega
joker early on, you still have the opportunity to settle the score later on.
What the Mega Joker does is let Monaco do it’s Monaco thing. It’ll still be hard
to overtake on track, it’s still going fast between the barriers, it’s still a hair
raising challenge. But we now translate that -qualifying- adrenaline to racing conditions:
if you can’t push to overtake the car in front, you now have an opportunity to take
one of your jokers and push in an equally challenging part of the track.
I don’t know. I think it might be neat. Or Crazy Idea 4: maybe we just fix the cars?
F1 cars don’t actually have a maximum length but they tend to run as long as 5.8 metres
and max at 2 metres wide, not counting the wheels. We already know they have very disruptive
aero [#Chain Bear: "Dirty Air"]
But that’s less of an issue in Monaco. Formula 2 had a tricky but ultimately scrappy
and entertaining three races on the very same circuit. Those cars are only 5.2 metres long
with skinnier wheels. Formula E finally raced on basically the same
Monaco layout as Formula 1 just two weeks earlier in 2021 and those cars are less than
5.2 metres long, less than 1.8 metres wide, with a wheelbase 600 mm shorter than Mercedes,
are torquey as hell and a right handful to drive. And what happened?
[Footage of Formula E] [#Mario Strikers: Luigi's Theme]
It was amazing.
The thing is, we’ve got a lot of cool tracks on the F1 calendar that a lot of people hate.
And some of them we dread going to, not because they’re rubbish tracks, but because F1 is
incompatible with those tracks. The 2017 rule change to make the cars bigger
and faster was the stupidest change I’d seen in decades. It hammered racing.
But F1 doesn’t have to be incompatible with its own tracks. We’re making a step forward
with next years regs but I believe we can make these cars smaller and punchier without
sacrificing speed or safety. It’s completely feasible.
And then maybe we can go to Barcelona and Sochi, Abu Dhabi maybe even Monaco and have
a whale of a time like some of the other cars do. That would be fun.
Although I still want to do the Mega Joker thing please.