How to fix F1?

[bjohnsonsmith]

Originally Posted by Peter Mallett

Yup, take a copy of the design to your nearest print-shop and run it through the copier. Never been done before.

There's 3D printing these days.

[Casper]

F1 ia really a very negative thinking series, ban everything that teams come up with and don't encourage innovation at any price. When was the last innovation not banned?

[chunterer]

Originally Posted by Casper

F1 ia really a very negative thinking series, ban everything that teams come up with and don't encourage innovation at any price. When was the last innovation not banned?

Is copying classed as innovation?

[Richard C]

Originally Posted by Peter Mallett

Yup, take a copy of the design to your nearest print-shop and run it through the copier. Never been done before.

I think your analogy is spot on. Make a copy of your copy. Inject "errors" as you go. A way to cheat at this would be...

1. Obtain a series of old school "flat" photos from many angles. If you dare, also do direct 3D scanning if you dare to be caught this early in the process as those scans might happen in public venues such as the pit.

2. Convert your series of flat photos into 3D models. This would be illegal but not as efficient as using direct photometric imaging devices which is faster and more accurate.

3. Replicate the part using the illegally obtained 3D models.

4. Reverse engineer your replicated parts using approved methods. Basically study the solution but use approved methods. Inject enough error/difference into the replicated part so that it is not dimensionally a perfect copy. Also alter as many non-key elements to further remove your solution from the source. Extensively document this process but by using the original "flat" images and omit any use of illegal techniques. Basically create a false "clean room" reverse engineering narrative. If you obtain information on a hidden solution (such as internal structure via CT scan), then you need to create a false path to how your "discovered" that solution independently. And your solution much again be different enough to pass inspection.

5. When/if challenged provide your evidence in the form of your cooked up reverse engineering process. Allow them to see that there are differences in the solutions both in construction and dimensions. You must provide a good story to tell on how you arrived at your solution. Probably not that hard to do.

Will anyone go this deep down the path to circumvent the rules? Probably not. Will someone still use less than optimal flat image to 3D conversion as part of their process (even if a bit illegal) probably.

Richard

[Richard C]

To catch covert use of 3D scanners. FIA (or teams) could use IR cameras to try to detect use of something like IR point projection as used in some 3D portable scanners. Those that use visible light in their scanning process would be hard to use as they would be visible to the naked eye. IR cameras in your pit should see the IR point cloud being projected and you would then see who is walking around covertly using an IR based 3D scanner.

Richard

[Richard C]

If teams get direct access to existing parts (use CT scan and other 3D photometric methods to reverse engineer) or get copies of 3D model files. They can use the approach I outline above to reverse engineer the 3D model into a new one. But they would need to manufacture the backing info (photos, etc.) of the item in the wild.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design

Richard

[chillibowl]

personally i like it.

with the budget cap coming in and teams looking at ways to bring their spending down, imo, we dont need the teams finding shortcuts to spending and development time by 'copying' each other. i suspect many already have issues with the listed parts that can be sold undermining competition and defintions of what a 'constructor' really is...wont this just be worse?

again just my opinion, but allowing this will lead to endless recriminations and hostility, possibly an overall reduction to innovation in the long run as teams forgo investments in genuine development in favour of spending on data acquisition (rather data theft), and worse, an even greater convergence on one solution every one employs.

that doesnt sound very sporting to me and may potentially destabilize the budget cap.

imo there is value in things being difficult!

[Richard C]

Originally Posted by chillibowl

personally i like it.

with the budget cap coming in and teams looking at ways to bring their spending down, imo, we dont need the teams finding shortcuts to spending and development time by 'copying' each other. i suspect many already have issues with the listed parts that can be sold undermining competition and defintions of what a 'constructor' really is...wont this just be worse?

again just my opinion, but allowing this will lead to endless recriminations and hostility, possibly an overall reduction to innovation in the long run as teams forgo investments in genuine development in favour of spending on data acquisition (rather data theft), and worse, an even greater convergence on one solution every one employs.

that doesnt sound very sporting to me and may potentially destabilize the budget cap.

imo there is value in things being difficult!

On the flipside, what it does mean is that instead of their being a cheap and easy way to replicate another teams solution, they are left with more labor intensive ways of doing the work. Which means more cost.

Will it stop the replication and design convergence? No, but it will slow it down as they spread the cost over time. Depending upon your viewpoint this is either good or bad. Bad if someone has a novel solution and then takes advantage of it for a long time (more than a season or two?) and th is results in some type of dominance. Good if you don't want single team dominance and everyone on a more level field (performance wise)

My personal opinion is that obtaining "examples" or "data" from other teams on restricted items should continue to be illegal. But that modern (and inexpensive) design tools should not be outlawed.

If they really want to throw a spanner in this. Just force the design engineers to move back to hand drawn designs and slide rules. Remove ALL computers. Some fans might like this. But professionally who would want to make design in F1 their career. Making 3D photometric methods illegal is already taking away potential "job experience" from folks who may like the idea of moving around from different industries (such as aerospace). At some point if F1 continues to restrict the tooling F1 designers will absolutely NOT be cream of the crop because other industries will support the designers vs. trying to hamper them. Overall, I think that allowing teams to reverse engineer solutions using what was considered "state of the art" decades ago, but making modern methods illegal is just dumb. What is the logic in this? The goal is to try to force more "imperfect copies" which in the end is a loosing proposition anyhow.

Richard

[chillibowl]

Originally Posted by Richard Casto

On the flipside, what it does mean is that instead of their being a cheap and easy way to replicate another teams solution, they are left with more labor intensive ways of doing the work. Which means more cost.

indeed. and under a budget cap scenario, any increase in cost in one area must result in a reduction in spending in another area.

i guess i look forward to such a compromise. some of these big teams have been operating without the need to budget because there is always more money to spend...i look forward to this changing.

as an attempt for a small team to build up i suppose 'copying' is not so bad but if employed by a big team, i find it more concerning.

Originally Posted by Richard Casto

If they really want to throw a spanner in this. Just force the design engineers to move back to hand drawn designs and slide rules. Remove ALL computers.

i am certainly a fan of of taking another's point to the extreme in order to illustrate that it said point is in itself ridiculous...thus the counter point i must make is to ask what happens when a team budget goes exclusively to taking pictures of another's cars and feeding it into a A.I. algorithm designed to design cars? machines building machines, the horror!

Remove ALL people!

seriously though, of course allow computers as tools to develop ideas and improve work flows and of course i understand that the natural transfer of staff and trained people observing what others are doing will lead to a natural diffusion of ideas and technology...this is inevitable, this is normal.

i just question the logic of allowing 'copying' as the starting point. where the line exactly needs to be is fluid so i will refrain from making an absolute declaration of whether or not this should be allowed or not...other than to say, my preference would be to see how the budget cap and new aero formula works (and what sort of innovation stems from it) first before the system is undermined with a new development formula.

however, as i may be already in danger of painting myself into the luddite corner, Mclaren, up until a few years ago at least, were still using Compaq laptops from the 90's to communicate with their cars/DOS based software.

so instead of banning computers, why not just make them use really really old ones instead?

i would imagine they are pretty cheap now!

[Peter Mallett]

Ah yes the windows 386 system, that'd give em something to think about.

[Richard C]

Originally Posted by Peter Mallett

Ah yes the windows 386 system, that'd give em something to think about.

Breaking news! Screenshot of new Mercedes race simulator. They are working hard to unlock the right sittings on suspension to make the tires work!





Richard

[chillibowl]

welcome to the Jeddah GP !

also nice to see strip of sand trap before the tarmac run off!

[P38 in workshop]

Originally Posted by Peter Mallett

Ah yes the windows 386 system, that'd give em something to think about.

A good while back,on a thread not unlike this one,I suggested allowing active suspension as long as it was limited to running on a Raspberry Pi.Not only would the Pi have abundant processing power at a very low price,it would be something that is familiar to school age students and might give them a link to the world of Formula 1.It needs to be kept in mind that the active system that helped Nigel Mansell win a championship was state of the art in the 386 era.


As for using photography to re-create a 3D object,there are lots of projects on maker websites for scanning with nothing more technical than a webcam so that a hobbyist with a 3D printer can make objects.Something similar is described here : http://ccwu.me/vsfm/index.html

[Casper]

Originally Posted by chunterer

Is copying classed as innovation?

Copying is not innovative as it has always been done by every team so I guess we can rule that out. A serious question, when was the last innovation that was not banned? I thought F1 was supposed to be the free thinking, make the damned thing go as fast as you can at any cost series but apparently it has turned into ban everything and stifle all free thinking. They may as well make it a spec series and let's see who actually is the best driver and at the same time dump the constructor's championship. It may be that dumping the constructor's championship could change F1 for the better.

[S griffin]

Of course innovation and free thinking has been what F1 has been about, but at the same time, if something works on another car, why not use it yourself? That's always has happened

[Casper]

Up until BE took over then innovation was gradually stamped out and the rule book grew thicker and lawyers were needed. He dumbed down the series and caused a huge rise in the engineering needed to try and gain any incremental advantage at huge cost. If they were allowed to think and develop more freely I would contend that the huge engineering overhead which is now killing the sport would be reduced dramatically. Incremental change is always the more expensive option than free thinking which allows big changes to be made. The rules are driving all the thinking up the same cul de sac so it all becomes a bit predictable and boring.

Originally Posted by S griffin

Of course innovation and free thinking has been what F1 has been about, but at the same time, if something works on another car, why not use it yourself? That's always has happened

[S griffin]

One thing I do miss is mechanical innovation. We very rarely see that these days, apart from the DAS steering on the Merc. More often than not it seems to be all aero

[crmalcolm]

Originally Posted by S griffin

One thing I do miss is mechanical innovation. We very rarely see that these days, apart from the DAS steering on the Merc. More often than not it seems to be all aero

There is lots of mechanical 'innovation' - maybe you just haven't been aware of it?

There is understandably a lot of focus on aero development - this is partly because any aero development has to be on a part of the car over which air flows, and so is more likely to be visible.
Mechanical innovation is more likely to be under the skin, and so hidden from view. That doesn't mean it's not happening though, and to say you miss mechanical innovation does not do justice to the efforts of the engineers and designers in the team responsible for these areas.

One example recently:
Ferrari and Red Bull - Articulated front suspension in 2018.

[Casper]

That is not innovation that is evolution. Why was it that MB & RB (from memory) had the front suspension banned? It should have been allowed and the other teams allowed to use the same system. There is not a lot of innovation at all, show me the last true innovation that was allowed and was an in your face change and everyone said what is that. Something like the six wheel Tyrell for instance or the first wings, now that was true innovation. If cars now were what we had before wings and a team decided a wing was a good idea to try it would now be completely banned quick smart. Perhaps a good thing in retrospect but not my point.

Originally Posted by crmalcolm

There is lots of mechanical 'innovation' - maybe you just haven't been aware of it?

There is understandably a lot of focus on aero development - this is partly because any aero development has to be on a part of the car over which air flows, and so is more likely to be visible.
Mechanical innovation is more likely to be under the skin, and so hidden from view. That doesn't mean it's not happening though, and to say you miss mechanical innovation does not do justice to the efforts of the engineers and designers in the team responsible for these areas.

One example recently:
Ferrari and Red Bull - Articulated front suspension in 2018.

[crmalcolm]

Originally Posted by Casper

That is not innovation that is evolution. Why was it that MB & RB (from memory) had the front suspension banned? It should have been allowed and the other teams allowed to use the same system. There is not a lot of innovation at all, show me the last true innovation that was allowed and was an in your face change and everyone said what is that. Something like the six wheel Tyrell for instance or the first wings, now that was true innovation. If cars now were what we had before wings and a team decided a wing was a good idea to try it would now be completely banned quick smart. Perhaps a good thing in retrospect but not my point.

In the same vein - when did we last see any real aero innovation from a team on the grid?

If we're going to criticise the lack of mechanical innovation, we can't say that aero innovation has happened instead.

IIRC, Ferrari and Red Bull started to use articulated front suspension in 2018, and MB followed suit in 2019. I wasn't aware it had been banned for all 3 teams...

[2 litre Touring Car Star]

That's interesting from Casper about Ecclestone. I never really warmed to him as an F1 fan, but some mechanics/staff of teams that are part of the same fb groups I'm in have nothing but high praise for him. Lifting the F1 "economy" through the roof.

It's from the mid-90s he and Mosley went past their use by date. On surface, allowing countries that have little to no car racing culture might be seen as a breakthrough for F1, but it's actually diminishing of F1/motor racing culture.

On the Australian board, I've often had a pop at those who express opinions that I don't think are in the best interests overall for Australian motor racing or mainly superficial views as not really being interested in racing.

Ecclestone is a guy who I'd label as not really being interested in motor racing, despite his long time involvement in it and influence of it. He may have had those attempts to qualifying in the 50s, but he's not really a driver. He's not an engineer, He owned a team for fun, and never had any ideas that enhanced F1/motor racing "authenticity", which would be the first thing I'd judge any idea on. Commercially he was great, but that's it.

[wnut]

Originally Posted by crmalcolm

There is lots of mechanical 'innovation' - maybe you just haven't been aware of it?

There is understandably a lot of focus on aero development - this is partly because any aero development has to be on a part of the car over which air flows, and so is more likely to be visible.
Mechanical innovation is more likely to be under the skin, and so hidden from view. That doesn't mean it's not happening though, and to say you miss mechanical innovation does not do justice to the efforts of the engineers and designers in the team responsible for these areas.

One example recently:
Ferrari and Red Bull - Articulated front suspension in 2018.

Just assuming technical innovation is happening doesn't mean it is either.

The biggest take away from F1 seems to be to buy the biggest heaviest car you can find for the safety!

https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/a...e-grown-so-big

"The longest car that Mercedes makes isn’t the luxury S-Class saloon or eight-seat V-Class people carrier. It’s Lewis Hamilton’s title-winning W11."


"Increased crumple zones extended the length of cars, and better head protection made them look bulkier. Crash standards continued to rise, requiring larger and more complex crash structures, and the introduction of the wooden plank, underneath cars to this day, increased ride height."

[Richard C]

With the recent posts about "innovation" and if it is happening or not, and if it is being banned or not. What do we mean by innovation? I think most here think of novel physical or mechanical gizmos when they think of F1 innovation (I could be wrong).

Where I think the innovation is probably happening in F1 is in how teams are really understanding "how" these cars work. Moving the sport from black magic into a science. While Mercedes brings things in things like DAS which are very public, I think they their real strength is in their ability to implement purposeful and targeted refinement.

Make the car easier to drive without sacrificing performance. Create wider performance windows so the cars are less sensitive to variables they can't control. Understand how to gather data to determine proper setup quickly. Understand what impacts reliability in the power unit, so they can push it's performance to the edge, but in a way that remains safe. Stuff like that.

Much of that is just hidden and show up as excellence in how they operate and perform on track.

Richard

[Casper]

Originally Posted by Richard Casto

With the recent posts about "innovation" and if it is happening or not, and if it is being banned or not. What do we mean by innovation? I think most here think of novel physical or mechanical gizmos when they think of F1 innovation (I could be wrong).

Where I think the innovation is probably happening in F1 is in how teams are really understanding "how" these cars work. Moving the sport from black magic into a science. While Mercedes brings things in things like DAS which are very public, I think they their real strength is in their ability to implement purposeful and targeted refinement.

Make the car easier to drive without sacrificing performance. Create wider performance windows so the cars are less sensitive to variables they can't control. Understand how to gather data to determine proper setup quickly. Understand what impacts reliability in the power unit, so they can push it's performance to the edge, but in a way that remains safe. Stuff like that.

Much of that is just hidden and show up as excellence in how they operate and perform on track.

Richard

In recent years Newey has publicly condemned and complained about F1 engineers/designers being corralled and not allowed to think and innovate the way it was done in the past. My point about if cars were still being raced without wings and a team thought that they could make a car go faster the FIA would not allow the wings to be fitted has not been commented on but it is an valid illustration of how F1 is restricting free thinking in design.

[S griffin]

I can understand Newey's point, but unfortunately times have changed. Things are a lot more restrictive and will continue to be. There will be room for innovation, but cost plays a big factor, as does technology taking away the drivers role. I think aero has played too important a role in the past and we need to minimise that sooner rather than later, as it has taken away a lot of spectacle. They are reducing a bit in 2021 and hopefully 2022 will go further still to making F1 much more exciting again