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Perhaps not 100% - perhaps 99. In any case a wind tunnel costs several thousand pounds an HOUR to hire, so there is no liklihood of underfunded drivers and teams using them. But unfortunately well funded teams can...
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funny then that Formula Vees end up in wind tunnels... again something that can be had for less than percieved wisdom tells you, there is a Dallara F3 tunnel model available for hire (no need for the big cost of building one) and the FSWT at MIRA is £5k for a 6 hours ish...
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But that is just set-up - not the sort of radical re-engineering that some F3 teams can afford.
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No major reworking and development... (whole new body coming next year)
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We've worked with quite a lot of them - so we know about the talent out there. But unfortunately there are (very) talented engineers working in the top teams too. If it were that easy to beat the likes of Carlin (or ASm or ...) on a modest budget, someone would have got close to doing it.
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Indeed so if you cant beat the best in the world at engineering Dallaras with a Dallara best try something else - another chassis perhaps. The Lola which I suspect is every bit as good as the Dallara would be the logical option, why is it easier - how much help will Dallara give you to beat other Dallaras? how much help will Lola give you to help beat Dallaras?
Read Carroll Smith, Valkenburgh etc.. its been borne out time after time, if you can't beat the masters playing it thier way play it a different way and you may get to the same place faster of better.
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Getting that sort of knowledge costs a lot of money in testing - you can't do it that on the cheap!
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well it depends how you spec your test programme. Dallara testing tends to focus on developing the drivers or possibly tyres, now that requires hours and hours of track time, on circuits. But Millbrook, MIRA, Longcross and the one in Paris that Pug use for the 908LM are dirt cheap, and let you do aero testing, laps, shakedowns, skidpads (if you aint used one and you don't know why you aint get reading!) for a fraction of the cost. Do you always need new tyres to develop the car?
I urge anyone vaguely involved in motor racing, as a driver, engineer, father of either etc to read 'the unfair advantage' by mark donohue his test programme would still stand up today I reckon (bar aero - for that read racing in the rain by John Horsman)
FPA - I'm a huge fan of it actually - it does prove the driver and at a good point and if I was advising a driver where to go it would be first season or 2 in vee to learn the tracks and about racing, and getting the licence up - the cheapest way to do it in a open wheeler btw, then a season or 2 in UKFF, then a season or 2 in FPA, then a season or 2 in F3... a long gestation perhaps but you'll have a very very sorted driver who will have a long pro career.
Only thing thats missing in FPA is car development - a suggestion I made a while back was to give each driver a 5k budget to develop the car - now they could spend that any way they please but boy would they learn (plus its too little for them to do too much so the cars can always go back to the standard spec at the end of the year)
On the topic of F3 engines - they are too expensive, mainly down to the restrictor, I think restricting fuel flow would be a cheaper way to go or adopting Super 2000 engine specs.