Does Formula 1 racing and high end audio go together for anyone else?
I don't think nearly as many in the US are into F1 racing, as a sport, as others around the world are. At least that's my understanding. I just turned onto it a couple of years ago but really enjoy it a lot. I turned onto it the season before the big rivalry came to a head last year between my man Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton.
My big system is actually in my bedroom b/c I live in a high rise in an urban community and the other big reason is b/c acoustically it appears to be pretty good.
I'm obviously not a hard core purist, because I've got my seventy five inch big screen between my ML Summits. Anyway, I'm curious if F1 racing is a thing with anyone else and more interested in what others think about the way things are looking for Mercedes and more specifically Mr. Hamilton.
I've been enjoying alternating between listening sessions and the practice sessions and the qualifying laps yesterday and would love to hear what others have to say about the distance b/w Verstappen and Hamilton leading p to the race today.
I find it kind of hard to feel sorry for Hamilton, personally, b/c he has a tendency to come off with such an air about him. At the same time, I do feel a little bit sorry for him b/c he appears to've lost his confidence on the track. I don't think he can blame his performance this weekend on the car.
I'm also loving the competition Ferrari is showing Verstappen on the track right out of the starting gate this season.
I've found that audiophiles tend to have some similar traits in common as far as things we appreciate about life and I'm curious if anyone else around here enjoys F1 like I do? And especially thoughts about the rivalry b/w Verstappen and Hamilton and the season so far in general.
BTW - If you watch Moto America, the announcer Jason Pridmore road for us one year and the Team Hammer Suzuki M4 sponsors are the Martin Brothers. Michael rode with us a couple of years, Richard was at all the races and helped with pit stops, Robert took my wife for a 140 MPH spin in his Porsche on a Dallas freeway. Jim S. |
@duramax747, I’m a huge fan of Sir Lewis Hamilton, who I consider the greatest Formula One race car driver of all time. Do you have a link to the work that you’re doing in racing or other endeavors? |
adasdad,Unfortunately that info cannot be disclosed with the agreements we have with the various race teams we represent. We do the skids and aero primarily. We also do manufacturering for some audio companies. Street and track cars we do a good bit of aero parts for as well.
|
Not sure if there is a connection between F1 and hi-end audio other than an appreciation for the finer things. IMO the Netflix series Drive to Survive has done a lot to bring the uninitiated into the fold. My spouse didn't know the sport existed and she loves that show. As far as the OP comment on feeling sorry for Hamilton. I find it hard to feel sorry for someone who has seven championship titles. |
georgeab, The only connection is a passion for both. Professional motorsports manufacturing are held to very tight tolerances. some being within .005". Audio is not even close to these tolerances so it makes it much less stressful and your not rushing to the tarmac to give the team your represent parts as they fly to race to get on car. |
Been a dedicated F1 fan since the '70s and have been a audiophile for almost exactly the same time so that's an interesting point. I was, however, losing Interest over the last few years in favor of MotoGP as I am sport motorcyclist and do lots of trackdays on a ex-race litrebike. Additionally, F1 is more of a tech exercise and less about the drivers. Plus the cars are way too big and heavy and should have TC; although the new formula this year has made things loads better. MotoGP blows it away still - the rider is what matters most, and aurally there's no competition - MotoGP bikes are the best and scariest sounding things on the planet! I'll forgive you supporting Verstrappen. Hamilton supporter here but he's not my favorite. And rather hate Vettel for many of same reasons I dislike Verstrappen. |
Yes - F1 fan and support McLaren overall. That being said happy to see the front of the grid with the Ferrari's and Red Bull's battling it out. The mid field is also interesting and this past weekend showed how the new regs seems to have brought about more wheel to wheel racing. Also the new cars sort of expose the notion that Lewis can drive any car from and position to victory, leaving the rest of the field in the dust. Once in the mid-field he is having to work harder than ever before and it is not longer going to be..."Oh Sir Lewis needs to get by me and I better comply". The race is definitely on. Also - would like to see Haas catch a break from time to time. Guenther Steiner has been fairly unfiltered on "Drive to Survive" over the seasons and I would like to see them do better in races and the standings. |
I was a F1 guy in my youth, back when it was a blood sport. My favorite driver was Sir Sterling Moss. He would win and compete with last years equipment against the factories using privateer equipment. Never won the title, but was always a factor.
I moved on when it became a parade with little passing. I prefer NASCAR now as the racing is much better, witness the past weekend at COTA. F1 is special, it mostly boring to me now. |
These new cars are way different than last years. Larger and much heavier wheels (13" to 18" adding about 50 lbs and tons more rotational mass), front ends that make for cleaner air so those behind can follow much, much closer without losing grip and wearing out front tires, under body aero since it's all downforce now with a much smaller rear wing, no more bargeboards to redirect air around the middle of the car, 10% (instead of 5.75% bio fuel), and better crashworthyness. In simulations, last years cars are still faster. Throw in the fact that the winning team gets the least amount of wind tunnel testing and you've got a whole new ball game. Just 10% more wind tunnel time can garner reams of R&D to work on. Mercedes won't get any more additional time until mid season and just what they can figure out in between races. It's a new era and Mercedes will figure it out and then we'll hear Verstappen whine like a little biatch when Hamilton and Russell start being competitive again. I feel sorry for Leclerc and Perez who're going to have to deal with Verstappen in the meantime. All the best, |
"I like F1 and wish they’d come back to Long Beach" nonoise-I’m a Long Beach native. 1975-first year, it was quite unorganized. For a couple of us teenaged kids in the hood, it was great because we were able to walk/watch the entire course, sit in the bleachers with beer! 1976 was the 1st official F1 race. Clay Reggazoni/Ferrari 1st place Niki Lauda/Ferrari 2nd. Race security was more organized, but we still found spots along Shoreline Drive and the drop into the Pike chicane. That started my interest in F1. Nothing compares to the sound of F1 engines screaming @15K RPM F1 was a money loser for Long Beach. LB couldn’t afford F1 |
I wish I could remember just which races I went to but it was around 4 or 5 and yes, it was great to just walk around the whole course to catch all the angles. I seem to remember the overpass you could walk over and just walking around took forever. I remember when they got more organized and put up walls along the course to block the view and force people to buy seats in the bleachers. That was a bummer since right up against some of the fencing was as close as you could get to the action. Those were the days. Too bad it was not working for them financially. All the best, |
| Post removed |
@stilljim - Hey Jim, I see you still enjoy going to local motorsports races. Any chance you've ever driven over to Anderson, IN for "The Little 500"? If not, you should check it out. The night before the Indianapolis 500, Anderson Speedway hosts a 500 lap unwinged sprint car race on their 1/3 mile high banked paved oval. They start 33 cars, 3 wide on the tiny track. Ever seen sprint car pit stops? What a treat. Watching the push trucks circle to push off the cars to start them while the track is buzzing with live racing. Next to seeing/hearing/feeling a couple of top-fuel dragsters, or funny cars, experiencing The Little 500 is truly the greatest spectacle in racing. And I've been to both Indy 500 and Formula 1 races... |
@re-lar-kvothe I was also at Watkins Glen in ‘77. What a weekend… a deer ran in front of my 240Z in upstate New York on the way to the Glen. When I got there, some “helpful” people were trying to direct cars to The Bog (for those not familiar with The Bog, try googling it) but I thankfully didn’t go there. Camped out at the track (the camping area was about two feet high in beer cans) in the rain for practice and the race. It was an experience, and it was definitely fun to watch F1 cars in person. |
So many older F1 fans! I love it. Honestly, I'm not sure how it started. ABC's Wide World of sports carried the Monaco GP and I was hooked somehow by watching Jackie Stewart then Jean Pierre Beltoise winning the ''71 and 72 races. You have to be just a bit geeky to be interested in high fidelity gear, IMHO, and back then the mechanical engineering in Grand Prix racing was so very creative. Men with slide rules, drafting tables and a gut instinct about what could work meant you never knew what new 'invention' was going to turn up at the track. So yeah, Stewart, Revson, Lauda, Ickx, Peterson, Andretti, Hunt, Prost, etc., etc., were all names I poured over in Autoweek and Competition press plus the British publications. I managed to get to the '78 - '80 US Grand Prix at Watkins Glen as well. Amazing memories of seeing my heroes in person. Such a great track. But yes, even if you avoided the infamous Bog, you could get awakened by drifting NY State Police tear gas clouds as they drifted from their intended targets. Ask me how I know! The aural pleasures of the sport are not to be forgotten, and to relate it to this audio / motorsports audience, the years of the Glen allowed me to hear Ferrari flat 12, (I witnessed Gilles' famous pouring rain practice laps) Alfa Romeo flat 12, Matra V12. A memorable motorsports event was attending the Monterey Historics in '91 when Juan Manuel Fangio was the honoree. The collections of Ralph Lauren, Alfa Romeo and Mercedes brought out their finest and let me tell you, hearing a rocket-fueled twin-supercharged straight 8, from the 1930s, is an eye watering experience. A Mercedes straight 8 desmodronic engine is quite the soprano as well. Somewhere else in the pits I found myself checking out a special pair of Ferrari 6 and 7 liter CanAm cars. When they both decided to fire up their engines, as I was standing in between the backs of both, made up for the fact I never got to hear John Bonham live. But Lime Rock is my home track, and I've really enjoyed the IMSA GTP years as well with any number of huge V8s, Jag V12s, BMW turbos, Porsche turbos of course, Ferrari 333SP (scream!) and best of all, the short lived Mazda RX-972P. I was for a time bored straight out of F1. Not because of team dominance, but more from the corporate-counsel style regulations that managed to engineer out creative engineering from the sport. But now that my dutch wife cares about how Max is doing, watching a race is more of something we do together. Go figure. |
@reubentHey Tom. Never tried the little 500 but I have heard of it. Nor for that matter, the big 500, just qualifying. Too much traffic to get out and in on race day. F1 or Moto GP was bad enough, add another 100,000 spectators and well it's more than I want to deal with.
Jim S. |
There are similarities. All too often, F1 is an unexciting parade of money and technology, with little actual racing. All too often, high-end audio is an unexciting parade of money and technology, with little interest in actual music. In over 50 years of watching road racing, the best racing I ever saw was a Pro Spec Miata event. And, I'd rather listen to good music on an indifferent system than bad music on the best system money can buy. |
@stilljim - You could be back home to Cincinnati from Anderson Speedway faster than you could get out of some of the parking lots at Indy. It's a great race. Seriously, a better spectacle and more interesting than nearly any type of motorsport I've ever witnessed. Not as racy as a great motoGP race, especially the smaller displacement support races where packs of 3/4/5 or more swap leads multiple times per lap, and the finish is often a drag race between the top 3/4/5 riders out of the last turn. BTW, I love Formula 1. But I'm a technology geeks, so there's that.... |
HUGE F1 fan here and have been for a LONG time. Also very much into sportscar series like LeMans, Daytona, etc. Have been to the F1 race in Austin a couple of times and absolutely had a blast. A while back I was in Monaco the week AFTER the F1 race so MISSED it. I also have an obsession with air cooled Porsches... |
I watched it during the Prost/Senna/Mansell era but gradually lost interest as the cars/technology became more important than the drivers. However high performance audio playback is analogous to a high performance F1 car in that it’s always a question of balance. What’s the point of over engineering in areas where the benefits are minuscule when the real bottlenecks are elsewhere?
I guess these front end first and above all else might agree with this quote by Enzo Ferrari: “Aerodynamics are for people who can’t build engines.”
Whereas Rega might find favour with this famous Colin Chapman quote, "Simplify, then add lightness” or even “Adding power makes you faster on the straights; subtracting weight makes you faster everywhere”
In audio these "bottlenecks" are the distortion produced by the playback equipment. Mechanical transducers such as loudspeakers in particular. Come to think of it, didn’t Maclaren themselves once produce a loudspeaker? The TAG McLaren F1 AvantGarde loudspeaker.
|
@cd318 , you should get back with it. They are RACING again. You have three drivers at the Senna, Prost, Mansell level. They are Verstappen, Leclerc and Hamillton with several honorable mentions. They just changed the formula so the cars are less reliable and Mercedes is in trouble. George Russell and Lewis Hamillton may well develop into a Prost/Senna rivalry. Cars and audiophiles definitely run together along with cycling. All my audiophile friends are into cars and cycling. |
Thanks for that. I think I will check a race or two this season. I used to be into it quite deep and would even watch the qualifying sessions the day before. Of course I'm familiar with the name of Lewis Hamilton but the only Verstappen I remember was Max's dad, Jos. As for Leclerc, well this is the first time I've heard of him. But yes, it's the rivalries that can make the sport so enthralling, and the fact that you never know when a car will unexpectedly break down either. High performance cars, high performance audio, what's not to like? |
I live blocks away from the Long Beach Grand Prix going on today. I don't follow Indy series, but it sure sounds cool hearing a swarm of 10,000lb bees screaming around the block. This weekend also brings out the goofballs driving their exotic super car. Witnessed one guy doing the ridiculous revving of his Mclaren at an intersection makes the right turn, tires break he loses control, just missing parked cars.
|
Yes, the build of the machine is subject to thousands of precise measurements and ultra-fine tolerances, optimization. engineering innovation and ongoing stress testing. In a non-woke world, some may classify this as kinda masculine. And then there’s the bling factor.... On the other hand, @georgeab who you were responding to, expressed the audiophiles aesthetic philosophy so often promulgated on these pages, in which measurements are an aberration on the natural order of things and the antithesis of beauty and good taste -
My own experience is that they are not mutually exclusive, however this is a cause of much consternation and emotional feelings for some men. |
I observe road racing, both cars and bikes is Euro centric, straight line and ovals an American obsession. Wonder if there's correlation between type of racing preferred and audiophiles.
Speaking of nitwits, got out on the bike yesterday for first time this spring. This rare nice spring day brought out the crazies for sure, I was on nice hilly, curvy country road, guy in black pickup truck going about 30mph in 55mph zone, so I pull out to pass in normal passing mode, not really getting on it, and the nitwit floors the truck just as I'm passing, I had to hit 90mph with hill coming up. My buddy saw what happened and stayed behind truck, said the guy in truck was flipping me off, he stayed behind the creep. During a stop at a country party store we hung out for a bit, crazies see our bikes, have need to show off, spring fever in high gear here! Wonder if these types are audiophiles, I hope not. |
"More Spectacular" That is one characteristic that has gone AWOL. Formula 1 drivers use to be colorful characters but now they are so well behaved it is boring off the track. Sir Lewis is a great driver, absolutely one of the best but not "the" best. That would go to Fangio who won 40+% of the races he ran in extremely dangerous front engine, tail happy behemoths wearing nothing but a T shirt and a leather skull cap. The greatest race of all time goes to Tazio Nuvolari. The 1935 German GP at the Nürburgring. My favorite has always been Ayrton Senna De Silva. "Second is just the first of the losers." A fierce competitor but also a voice for children and the impoverished. Never has a sportsman been so loved by his country. There are very few drivers who can win in a bad car, Tazio was one and Ayrton another especially if it rained. Ayrton could find grip where no one else could. The other racer that is an extraordinary human is Valentino Rossi, but that is Moto GP. Watch Valentino and Lewis swap rides! |
| Post removed |
I was privileged to witness the F1 race on the streets of Phoenix, AZ back in the day. The sound of the twelve-cylinder Ferraris echoing off the skyscrapers was a nearly religious experience. It would be great to hear that again on a good stereo. I also liked the sound of my Ducatis. What do these all have in common? An appreciation of gut level sensation. That’s what my audio system does for me. |
@larryro2 Your post reminds me of 2 things: the exhaust note from my bike. My pipes were hand tuned, by Mario who was the Ducati mechanic who serviced my bike and not only a dear friend, but a seriously fun riding buddy. I'd go hang out w/ him in the shop on Saturday, while he was working on bikes and then he and I would go riding when he got off in the afternoon. My bike took 1st Place one year in what we used to call the Duc Bark, which was a contest held at the annual BBQ picnic the Ducati dealership here in KC used to put on every year. Awards are given based on applause. The other thing your post reminded me of is: One time I was at a motorcycle event here in KC called Ralph Wayne's Backyard Invitatinals. I was standing, talking to a couple of motorcycle buddies, and I heard this beautiful noise! like right behind me. I turned around, and this guy had just kick started a 1952 Vincent Lightning Black Shadow. And then he just putt putted right by me onto a waiting trailer. I almost fainted, it was so cool. Lol Oh, the memories. : ) |
@sofaman How cool, that your wife will now enjoy an F1 race with you. Is that something to be grateful for, or what? : )
|
