A case to go back to smaller wheels and tyres

[Taxi645]

Originally Posted by Richard Casto

Image pulled from discussion elsewhere. Are they identical? No. Are they very close? Close enough to support my opinion? In my opinion absolutely. The position is slightly different all over, but the larger difference is leg/feet height and not eye height.



The reduction in visibility is real. The slightly taller tires and the aero bit that goes over it does reduce the sightlines from before. But... In the grand scheme of things your argument that this means (or is a strong argument for) moving to either narrower or shorter tires is empty because other top level series all the way up to saloon cars have it much much worse and drivers deal with it. And yes, there are accidents in prototype racing which can be attributed to visibility challenges.

Just extend your argument to Karts vs most every thing else. You clearly see over the wheels. You have excellent visibility. How are drivers able to make anything other than Karts work today? I am not sure if I can drive safely to the grocery store later today. I can't begin to see the corners on anything?

I think what you are seeing in that quote. Is the same comments you see when open wheel drivers move to closed cockpits. They commonly call out that they just can't do what they did previously (and probably privately wonder how anyone drives those cars quickly). But they just have to adjust their style. It is more challenging, but no so unsafe that all racing should be open wheeled with tiny wheels (i.e. Karts)

If you want a F1 visibility issues to try to solve, how about the challenges they face in seeing who is beside/behind them?

Richard

I don't think you can draw any meaningful conclusion based on that image. The difference in head height could be anything from 0 to 10 cm's from those two images.

It surprises me that you signal out a single item in the argument out of the five I listed when any significant advantage of going to that big a tire diameter has yet to be communicated at all.