[Rules] Future Rule Changes

[Mike Harte]

By the way, as posted by someone else previously, if anyone is being frustrated by Autosport's desire to make money from readers so that the reader can see their advertisers' rubbish, A newish website is up and running which seems to be displaying all of Autosport's articles, and it's totally free (at the moment).

See: http://www.racer.com/f1

[bjohnsonsmith]

Originally Posted by Mike Harte

By the way, as posted by someone else previously, if anyone is being frustrated by Autosport's desire to make money from readers so that the reader can see their advertisers' rubbish, A newish website is up and running which seems to be displaying all of Autosport's articles, and it's totally free (at the moment).

See: http://www.racer.com/f1

Racer is excellent but I've got into the habit of using Autosport, over the years.

[Mike Harte]

Originally Posted by S griffin

Bernie says in that article he also wants time penalties. What could he possibly mean by that?

This seems to be the answer: http://www.grandprix.com/ns/ns33176.html

It would appear that BCE really wanted to add a time penalty to those of the faster qualifiers based on their race position at the previous GP. So, even worse than just a reverse grid, this penalises drivers for achieving a good result in a race. And he's upset because the teams wouldn't play ball.

All he thinks about is the show. Not the huge amount of work that the teams put in to preparing cars that they think are the best that they can produce given the rigid structures put in place by the FIA, and certainly not the hard work put in by the drivers who spend hours and hours training so that they can be in the best physical shape they can possibly be.

No, the Bernie way is to reward success by punishing those who do well!

[S griffin]

Of course the teams are not supportive, they've done all the hard work, so why would they have their hard work penalised!

It was bad enough seeing my beloved Arsenal get beat by Man Utd today, imagine how much worse it would have been if they had to start on -1 goals due to their previous game performance

Let's just remember not every sporting event is going to be an all out thriller. And as well as enjoying the excitement, we should also appreciate the skills of the competitors

[bjohnsonsmith]

In that article he says: "I wanted qualifying to stay as it is, because it is good, and then if a guy is on pole and has won the last race he gets so many seconds added to his time so he has to fight through the bloody pack to get in the lead, which he would do in the end."

This seems like he was attempting to affect driver and team dominance by making it harder for both in the next race.

He then goes onto say: "There are a million things they could do but they are completely mad,". Asfaic, adding seconds to a driver's time in the next race because they were on pole in the previous race and then went on to win it, is completely mad. I'm glad it never happened.

[Sodemo]

The answer (I think) to a lot of the inequalities in F1 is much simpler aero rules.

There is a massive gulf in the aero performance of the top team(s) and the bottom. If you were to outlaw many areas of the car where you could not place aero bodywork, it would mean the potential gains would be far less. I would mandate, very small front wing of a set dimension, standard underfloor, very small rear wing of a set dimension (think F3 sized).

Instead of developing maybe 900kg of downforce, perhaps the new rules might allow them to get 300kg, however thats still a 2/3rd reduction and I feel the smaller teams would have more of a chance of clawing some of that back. It would be a much smaller part of a cars overall performance.

[Casper]

I saw a diagram showing they want to increase the distance between the front axle line and the front wing and increase the front wheel width at the same time. They most probably have to increase the wheel width because moving the wing forward will increase down force on the front wheels. or they could be wanting to run less wing loading on the front wing to lessen the drag and have the same front tyre loading & adhesion I suppose.

[Taxi645]

This is quite telling:

http://www.espn.co.uk/f1/story/_/id/...ng-pat-symonds

It would require probably require the amount what three top teams spend on aero development for two GP weekends to have sufficient funds for a decent investigation to what is required.

It's a clear sign the current day F1 leadership does not have the required understanding of motorracing nor the sense of direction or coherency to have had this investigated properly years ago.


We are rushed into new rules for 2017 and the process by which this is done is characterized by a lack of proper understanding what is required and how it could be realized. Furthermore it is full of team politics with the occasional goof ball "improve the show" fart from BE because he knows F1 is in gridlock and he can't improve the racing the proper way.

[S griffin]

Pat talking good sense there. Bit refreshing to hear. Shame the OWG couldn't improve on the 2009 rule changes, as they had some good groundwork and now it looks like everything is to be undone

[Pingguest]

Originally Posted by Sodemo

The answer (I think) to a lot of the inequalities in F1 is much simpler aero rules.

There is a massive gulf in the aero performance of the top team(s) and the bottom. If you were to outlaw many areas of the car where you could not place aero bodywork, it would mean the potential gains would be far less. I would mandate, very small front wing of a set dimension, standard underfloor, very small rear wing of a set dimension (think F3 sized).

Instead of developing maybe 900kg of downforce, perhaps the new rules might allow them to get 300kg, however thats still a 2/3rd reduction and I feel the smaller teams would have more of a chance of clawing some of that back. It would be a much smaller part of a cars overall performance.

Boxes are already used to designate areas in which no bodywork is allowed. Standardized or semi-standardized aero parts are not new either. The central part of the front wing as exactly the same for everyone; the floor is practically the same for everyone, as ground effect underbodies are effectively banned. This raises the question whether geometric limits and standardization are the right answer.

[ECW Dan Selby]

I still can't help but feel Mosley got the 2009 rules spot on... You either spend as much as you like on a tiny area of the car, or spend 40 million or under on most of the car.

Loved it!

Selby

[Richard C]

Originally Posted by Taxi645

This is quite telling:

http://www.espn.co.uk/f1/story/_/id/...ng-pat-symonds

Great quote from Pat Symonds from the article regarding "speeding up the cars"...

"I don't think what is proposed for 2017 will be disastrous in any way, the cars will be quicker but I personally don't think that will be very relevant because none of us can tell the difference in FP2 between a car on full tanks and qualifying pace; you've got four seconds per lap difference there and you can't see it without looking at the timing screens.

Richard

[ECW Dan Selby]

Honestly, the biggest issue in that sense is the engine noise. Watch the V8's/10's and tell me they don't look quick because of the high-strung sound....

So yeh, he's right in a sense. They probably won't actually look any quicker at all!

Selby

[Mike Harte]

Ah, but from Ecclestone's perspective, it makes sense to have the cars being 5 seconds a lap quicker. That means that, on average, he can sell the broadcasting rights for the same money (or more) but the races will be on average 5 minutes shorter; more $$$ per second for FOM!

[old man]

Originally Posted by Mike Harte

Ah, but from Ecclestone's perspective, it makes sense to have the cars being 5 seconds a lap quicker. That means that, on average, he can sell the broadcasting rights for the same money (or more) but the races will be on average 5 minutes shorter; more $$$ per second for FOM!

[chillibowl]

Originally Posted by Mike Harte

Ah, but from Ecclestone's perspective, it makes sense to have the cars being 5 seconds a lap quicker. That means that, on average, he can sell the broadcasting rights for the same money (or more) but the races will be on average 5 minutes shorter; more $$$ per second for FOM!

but it raises an interesting question...were the races in danger of running too long for the accepted TV window or is this just a pride thing/speed for the sake of being the fastest?

if its the latter and given Symonds assertion that they really dont completely understand the connection between aero and overtaking then yeah making the cars faster just for the sake of the cars being faster probably wont help cracking the overtaking issue. might just make it worse even.

side note, part of me has to think that the teams with the most money/biggest budgets know exactly the effect aero has on the the cars running behind them...either they are trying to make it worse in an attempt to keep the following car off of their backs or they trying to minimize the effect of dirty air created by the car in front of them in order to pass the car ahead.

after about 20 years of dealing with this effect, it begs the question how do they not know what is going on?

to be honest Symonds comments came across as a tad disingenuous to me. that or there must be an element to his point that i do not get.

[Mike Harte]

chillibowl, to be fair to Symonds and other automotive engineers, they know about what goes on behind the cars: their wind-tunnel testing tells them all they need to know about that. What they don't know is, under the current aero rules is how to mitigate the "dirty" air that their cars leave behind.

I have sympathy with them, because this is a problem that also affects the world of aviation. The boffins have designed the near perfect, for it's purpose, aero for all the current passenger planes, but they have yet to find a solution to their "dirty" air or turbulence that their aircraft leave behind. This is a major problem at the world's busiest airports because traffic controllers have to especially keep landing aircraft apart because of the turbulence created affecting the planes directly behind them; the bigger the plane, the greater the spacing between them. And they have to keep extra spacing for take-offs as well.

So, it's two important users of sophisticated aero who have so far been unable to find the solution to "dirty" air, and they probably employ the finest brains in that field.

[Sodemo]

I don't think you need to be a rocket scientist to know what is wrong with the formula, so I will keep it simple.

Mini racing, zero aero, small cars with grippy tyres and you get amazing racing.
Even if you look at another single seater series like Formula Ford, (ok forget the current winged version - im speaking about the 90s and 2000s series). No wings, small slicks = great racing.

On the flipside, you have DTM which is heavily aero influenced, very light cars, in fact, not that far from F1, and the racing can be processional.

When you get a formula which is highly aero dependent, has super light cars with extremely short braking zones and then expect the racing to be amazing, you really need to re-think things.

I do despair a little when I hear people say "they don't know what is the solution" to the F1 problem. I either think they aren't being entirely truthful or they are clueless.

I invite people to take a look back 20 or 30 years to the races of the early 90s and 80s and just take notice at how close cars can follow each other through corners.

[chillibowl]

Originally Posted by Mike Harte

So, it's two important users of sophisticated aero who have so far been unable to find the solution to "dirty" air, and they probably employ the finest brains in that field.

fair point and it may be a similar problem but surely coming up with a solution for a field of 20 bespoke car shaped objects is a much smaller and easier problem to solve than correcting it for tens of thousands of flying billboard shaped objects.

if there are indeed similarities with this problem for the two industries, i would have more faith in the FOM/FIA subcontracting the problem out to the airline industry to see what input they could give rather than leaving the task for F1 engineers to deal with.

anyways, surely they have, for the most part, solved this problem for road cars and trucks?

[Mike Harte]

Originally Posted by chillibowl

anyways, surely they have, for the most part, solved this problem for road cars and trucks?

I don't think that they have, you know. Have you never overtaken a truck, and found yourself either being "sucked in" towards it, or conversely being "pushed away" from it. Both are the result of turbulence. In crude terms, when ever an object has to travel through the air, it creates turbulence, and the designers/engineers are not concerned by what is affected by that dirty air, their only concern is that it affects their own object/car/truck/plane as little as possible. Nobody pays them to worry about any other user.

[chillibowl]

actually yeah, i have experienced that overtaking a truck and even losing grip as i move out of a following car's (car similar in shape and design to mine) slipstream when i attempt to overtake them on the highway. and the higher the speed the greater the effect.

good point.

[Casper]

Originally Posted by S griffin

Pat talking good sense there.

The engineer can't see and talk about what everyone else can???? He really can't grasp that the extreme aero route that F1 has blindly gone down is killing good racing and overtaking? Yeah, right!! They want their cake and eat it too, keep the aero as it is at all costs and try and fool everyone that attempts are being made to "improve" things. The inmates are loose in the asylum again. Call me cynical but that is the way I see it.

[Mike Harte]

Originally Posted by Casper

The engineer can't see and talk about what everyone else can???? He really can't grasp that the extreme aero route that F1 has blindly gone down is killing good racing and overtaking? Yeah, right!! They want their cake and eat it too, keep the aero as it is at all costs and try and fool everyone that attempts are being made to "improve" things. The inmates are loose in the asylum again. Call me cynical but that is the way I see it.

I don't believe that is what he is saying at all (maybe it's lost in translation ). He, and his opposite numbers at other teams, are paid big bucks to design the most efficient car that they can given the rules laid down by the FIA. It is not their concern that a car behind their's cannot get close because of turbulence produced by their aerodynamics, although they have to rake that into consideration in their own designs.

Many of us would probably like to see the cars stripped of all their aero devices, but the reality is that it isn't going to happen. You can't turn the clocks back. The answer might be, IMHO, for the FIA to set up another Overtaking Research Group and this time hire aerodynamicists who come from outside F1, possibly from the aviation world, under the leadership of a retired aerodynamicist from one of the top teams who can be relied on to be non-partisan and who believes in trying to solve the problem.

[Casper]

I don't believe those involved in F1 really want to change anything. Fair enough, but hindsight has proven the path they are on is not being received well by the great unwashed so just maybe major changes are needed including questions asked about the whole philosophy of F1 or it is doomed or at least destined to not being the premier race series it once was. The powers that be really don't get it, the product stinks and needs a major revamp not fiddling around the edges with bits like front wings and wheel widths. Where is the business plan to stop the decay of a once great category??

[Mike Harte]

Originally Posted by Casper

I don't believe those involved in F1 really want to change anything. Fair enough, but hindsight has proven the path they are on is not being received well by the great unwashed so just maybe major changes are needed including questions asked about the whole philosophy of F1 or it is doomed or at least destined to not being the premier race series it once was. The powers that be really don't get it, the product stinks and needs a major revamp not fiddling around the edges with bits like front wings and wheel widths. Where is the business plan to stop the decay of a once great category??

This is not the responsibility of the teams; this should be solely down to the FIA. They should employ staff to draw up the rules, and they should take note of the public's views.

In one way I agree with Ecclestone; democracy in F1 doesn't work. It needs the FIA to dictate the rules, not a committee of vested interest who couldn't agree on what type of biscuits they want served with their tea and coffee! But just don't let BCE loose with the rule book.