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cjbarber 5 days ago

This reminds me of a principle I like: Once you understand your key traits and the key things customers come to you for, it's good to embody them everywhere!

F1 is largely about speed. (I fondly remember going to various races as a child with my grandparents, in Melbourne. Everyone seemed in awe of Schumacher). So of course your website should be about speed!

This could then apply to everything: ticket turnstiles that measure themselves on time per guest scanned, food vendors that do the same thing, websites that measure and rank on speed.

cybrjoe 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

This seems reductionist. There's plenty of other reasons people are F1 fans: the spectacle, the wealth, the prestige. While speed is certainly a draw for a lot of fans, speed can be at odds with the some of these other traits. For instance I took my son to qualifying in Miami, and while we both thoroughly enjoyed it, qualifying is quite short, and not nearly as exciting as watching it on TV. My son's first comment was: they don't seem as fast in person.

We ended up kicking around the track for a few hours taking in all the sights and experiences and he enjoyed that a lot more.

I guess my comment is, speed is important, sure, but don't give me a plaintext website either. There's a balance between speed and entertainment value.

_thisdot 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

I thought F1 was supposed to look a lot faster in person. The cars going at 300kmph don't look so fast on a screen because the camera stabilisation. Someone who makes drones on YouTube collaborated with RedBull to shoot Max Verstappen with a drone at those speeds. And Max was impressed by the perception of speed from the drone footage compared to regular TV broadcast

Link to YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pEqyr_uT-k

dylan604 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

Okay, that was a cool video. It's always cool to see how things go wrong and how the challenge was overcome. That has to be a really cool and fun job.

prmoustache 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

your eyes/brain stabilize better than any camera/software.

Having attended f1, rally and euro hillclimb races in person, I also thought the F1 in the v8/v10/v12 era indeed looked slower than on TV. I think the reason is they were so scandalously loud that you would expect something visually faster from something that is ripping your ears off even with plugs.

dylan604 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> My son's first comment was: they don't seem as fast in person.

That was the exact opposite of my experience with autoracing. Watching on TV with the long tracking/panning shots seem to reduce the effectiveness of the speed. Standing at the track watching the cars fly by and are only there for a split second really brings home how fast they are. "zoom zoom" is about as close as one can get to describing it. There's also just no way to replicate how loud the cars are either. I've seen Fox try where they have moments where the commentators shut the hell up for a minute, they push the mix from the mics around the track, display Vu like meters on screen with some sort of Dolby/surround type of something suggesting it sounds great in that mode. Don't care. Nothing like being there.

epolanski 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> My son's first comment was: they don't seem as fast in person.

Depends when you're sitting, but you mostly appreciate it at good corners.

There, you can really feel why F1 is fast.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1ckq7T1Tlg

rconti 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'd expect a long lens shooting down a series of S-curves (think: Austin) would exaggerate how fast the cars look, but everything else would seem faster in person. My first F1 race was, indeed, in Austin, and the cars seemed mind-bendingly fast. Even just the sound sent a shiver up my spine as I walked up to the track from a half mile away. But that was in the V10 era; now they're very quiet.

On the other hand, my last F1 race was at Silverstone, and we were at Vale grandstand which is right at pit entry and the final chicane before the front straight. Sitting in a braking zone definitely makes the cars look slow.

cjbarber 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Yes! There'll be different key traits for different customers. Like you say for F1, might be speed for some, prestige for others. So perhaps you might need to focus most of your things on both, or some things on prestige and some on speed. Generally there'll be a relatively small set of truly key traits.

atonse 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I actually strongly agree with this philosophy because it’s about fostering a certain culture.

But as a counterpoint for the sake of argument, money and time spent on optimizing the website could be better spent on the actual race related stuff. So that might be where the optimization is happening.

In reality, it’s probably the simpler explanation, that they know how to hire mechanical engineering talent and just see IT as a cost center (and a nuisance) so probably are cheap in that department.

consp 5 days ago | parent [-]

The website does not fall under the budget cap, there is plenty of money to go around which cannot be used for racing anyway.

gpderetta 5 days ago | parent [-]

Indeed! Ferrari literally started racing again in Le Mans Series because they didn't want to have engineers sitting around or fire them due to the F1 budget cap. Instead they redirected (very successfully) their additional resources elsewhere.

atonse 18 hours ago | parent [-]

Didn't know about this, what a totally cool result of a normally mundane action (re-allocation of business resources)

FirmwareBurner 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>F1 is largely about speed.

Not since a long time. It's about creating endless regulations to please big teams, sponsors and advertisers. 2026 cars will be even slower than before.

dralley 5 days ago | parent [-]

Faster doesn't necessarily mean better racing. And F1 has been heavily regulated forever.

Turbos were banned in the 80s because they made the cars too powerful and difficult to handle. The reason F1 tires had big grooves cut into them for a long time was to reduce grip, also in an effort to tame the cars a bit and slow them down while cornering.

The 2026 regulations are no different. Yes peak power is reduced but so is downforce / drag. Drivers will have to brake a bit more at the turns and accelerate out of them (which the extra electrical power will make easier). That means more overtaking possibilities, and the overtaking will likely be more based on driving skill than the current DRS push-to-pass. The current ground effect cars have so much downforce that they can go through corners flat out that no previous generation of cars would have been able to - and while that's cool to watch it's not that interesting from a racing perspective. You don't want to watch a high-speed parade.

For years everyone was catastrophizing about how the 2026 regs would make the cars 8 seconds slower, but the current consensus is around 1 second. That's not a big deal. And it only takes things back to say 2007 speeds, nobody ever accused 2007 of not being exciting.

stockresearcher 5 days ago | parent [-]

6 or 7 years ago, F1 did a tour of large-ish cities around the world that did not have races nearby. They had booths set up where some teams showed off various technologies and materials and you could ask questions. They had some various cars on display. The highlight was a demo session where they had a collection of F1 cars of various vintages as well as some exotics driving around a makeshift circuit that had been setup on streets next to the venue. The one that I had taken my son to, the circuit included a 180 degree turn. None of the most modern F1 cars could navigate it! (well actually, the drivers eventually learned that by doing donuts, they could in fact complete the turn).

It was highly entertaining because it did not go well at all, and I'm pretty sure that F1 didn't actually finish the full scheduled tour. But it really showed a big difference between old cars and new.

dralley 5 days ago | parent [-]

The newer cars are definitely bigger and less nimble. 2026 regs help a little bit with that but not quite enough.

nullify88 5 days ago | parent [-]

Or it maybe due to the cars and their designs being throughly tuned for the tracks they are racing on. More so when compared to previous generations of F1 cars.

dralley 5 days ago | parent [-]

I mean the cars are literally bigger and heavier. Even compared to 2014 / 2017. They're incredibly fast but can't be thrown around like the smaller and lighter cars from previous eras.

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poemxo 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

There should be a DRS button on the website too!

tmtvl 4 days ago | parent [-]

Sure, but you can only use it if you arrive at the website within a second from the visitor before you.