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Felipe Massa says that the 2017 cars brought a positive change, as it moved Formula 1 away from "grandmother" driving. The 2017 cars were designed to go much faster through the corners, with a shake-up in the aerodynamic regulations.
The veteran Brazilian retired from the sport for a second time last month, and has spoken out in praise of the cars that raced this year. He likened the cars to the 2006-08 machines, in which he claimed all 11 of his F1 victories.
"Definitely I will remember that it [the 2017 car] is nice to drive," Massa said. "When you're just driving the car it is quite a nice feeling for the driver in terms of the G-force and the physicality. I think to do a perfect lap in these cars you need to be a proper driver, not like in the past where the tyres were going away or you needed to drive like a grandmother.
"Now you need to drive like a driver. It's similar to maybe 2006, '07 and '08 (or even before that time. You have the car ready to accept everything so the driver really needs to risk and drive in a proper, aggressive direction."
One of the major criticisms that emerged from the revamped regulations was the lack of overtaking. Drivers found it much more difficult to follow a car in front, with statistics showing that overtaking as a whole was down by 47% from 2016. Massa believes that work needs to be done to improve that area.
"I think the only thing that needs to be changed is to understand how to follow other cars a bit better," Massa stated. "[You can have] as much downforce as we have but you need air. If you don't have air because you have a car in front you lose downforce, you lose grip.
"So definitely for overtaking, if Liberty can understand how to improve the cars on the floor or different things to manage to be able to follow cars a little bit closer it would be good for the show."
Fergal Walsh
Grand Prix of Belgium
G. Zhou
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Replies (4)
Login to replyf1fan0101
Posts: 1,804
Yes this is true, the cars were much more spectacular
calle.itw
Posts: 8,527
Thanks for clarifying what you compared this year to. Honestly, comparing a new era to a year with so many overtakes as 2016 had, a pretty high quality season IMO, isnt really fair. Comparing it to a mean over the recent 5-10 season would be far more fair IMO.
Honestly, I think it was a pretty decent start to a new era, but I hope 2018 will be better. I fear it might not be, if teams only have 3 allocations each..
kngrthr
Posts: 203
reduce the front wings and give the designers back the floor. that would would be something.
calle.itw
Posts: 8,527
If it was that simple, they'd done it already.