This is live blogged at the Santander F1 FOTA Fan Forum. It will possibly contain errors and missed sentences. For the full story, make sure you catch the videos later.
Update 2/7: I’ve added the video
Luca Coliani
Tony Fernandes
James Allen
Martin Whitmarsh
Jock Clear
Paul Di Resta
Christopher Nolan: F1 has reached a turning point, FOTA has won concessions, FIA under new management. Circumstance, luck and tech. is it diff to find solutions to overtaking. Can the rules be relaxed to allow this?
MW: A popularise view that we should have more overtaking..in first few races we did 39 takes, largely due to the fact we made a hash of qualifying if too much overtaking, then intrigue goes away, quickest guy at front etc. Media has a little too much of a fetish about overtaking..we are doing some things, rear wing next year, the regulation that accompany it are critical and not enough through yet, eg proximity sensor seems sensible to work with. we need to try and be prepared to say we are wrong and pull bank, not what we do traditionally, we run into them, heave to experiment, people want F1 to be meritocracy , what quickest driver,/car, wants a little unexpected to happen, we’ve had fanatics races, a good championship fight.
PdR: the drivers are keen to overtake, but the safety involved; they don’t want to see what happens in US, where all slip stream. you want to see people taking after mistakes. FOTA have come up with some good ideas, but we need to address it…
Q: It used to be about braking, now it’s about slipstream..why not make braking harder.
JC: Understand, but the level of driving is so good that these guys do not make mistakes, there is still a distance…they will hit it on the nail every lap, and there is only one racing line and unless you are on it, you can’ go faster enough. It’s not tech, brakes etc, it’s the drivers. We have to come up with ways of circumnavigating the skill level, without going away form the skill. we don’t want situation where it is pointless to defend..I like a 15 lap dinging when they never overtake then a simple overtake, Watching CH defending himself is fantastic. We have to be careful not to lose what we have this season.
John Elvey: How can you use tyre supplier to enhance racing?
LC: the combination of Montreal was special, normal choice of tyres, (same as Bahrain), we had a different surface. it is difficult to say more difference, as we have to keep in mind safety, don’t need to push random. it depends on Pirelli what they what to do and will look with engineers to go this direction but not too far.
JA: one safe tyre and one edgy tyre.
TF: threes should be a real difference…more strategy. i hope they are different and have an impact on race.
Josh Piggot. Not the amount, but the opportunity, Reducing grip and increasing mechanical grip is seen as best way..what is the best way to follow through corners.
PdR: Canada was quite special, bit were close on performance…but degraded differently. as a driver, you lose downforce, as they close up, when things work, you can follow closely..what they did last year has improved and it will improve next year.
Q:Frank Durney: Have to agree we have had a great year,..we should not change too much,,we should use tech and knowledge to do this. never seen that more mechanical grip gives more overtaking. If so, then worst races in wet..sims show that grippier tyres would have lot of overtaking
Zachary: Surely it would be unfair to give on;y the following driver the ability to adjust wing, better with all
JC: don’t have a strong opinion. we need to think to understand the implications. what we tend to do, we tend to pose a change on the format we see at the moment, we need ot look beyond that, to where they will all develop, what are the engineers going to go. what the implications are. I don’t know if that is the solution. we have to be careful how we go about this, I would have said lets try this..but with season we have it would be a shame to go the wrong way and give us another problem, we need to think and let brains think about,
MW: we give our drivers a variable rear wing and other teams don’t like it. We need to option, we can’;t design in last minute and we have to be careful of how to deploy it.