[Rules] Future Rule Changes

[djinvicta]

Yes, thank you Adam. Apologies to Red Bull.

[Peter Mallett]

Originally Posted by Pingguest

The reason drivers run out of fuel, was because the fuel readouts were not that accurate at that time.

In the eighties, the fuel consumption was effectively limited by a fuel tank size limit. This limit was gradually decreased from 225 liters in 1984 to 150 liters in 1988 (for super- and turbocharged engines only). I failed to find any rule book from the eighties, apart from the one for the 1988 season. In that year, [a]ny storage of fuel on board of the car at a temperature more than ten centigrade below the ambient temperature [...] [and] [t]he use of any specific device (whether on-board or otherwise) to decrease the temperature of the fuel below the ambient temperature [were] forbidden.

Regardless the possibility and legality of cooling fuel to any temperature, one could not work around the fuel tank size limit. If this limit is not incredibly high, making it meaningless, it will cause a fuel ration.

The reason they ran out was because they were racing and gave not a jot for fuel consumption. We are talking about racing not economy drives.

[chillibowl]

more recently, post race in Brazil 2007 where BMW-Sauber and Williams were investigated for the remaining on board fuel temp was lower then allowed.

there was not enough evidence (not enough fuel to analyse iirc) but Mclaren appealed hoping the disqualifications would lift LH a few spots allowing him to take the 2007 title away from Kimi.

rules changes and is F1 broken?...its convenient to blame BE and the money people but the teams are not honest bystanders in all of this.

we euphemistically call what they do 'tricks of the trade' but this is a dirty game and as a current trend people dont want to follow sports where the perception is one of scandal, collusion, and dishonest competition...which in fairness are traits that have always been a part of F1.

personally i like it warts and all but at the same time this is a house of cards and always has been. anyways just sayin.

[Pingguest]

Originally Posted by Peter Mallett

The reason they ran out was because they were racing and gave not a jot for fuel consumption. We are talking about racing not economy drives.

Well, let have a four-time world champion have his word.

Originally Posted by Alain Prost

All the time I thought about minimum boost, saving fuel. No, this was not racing but you still have to find a way to win, a way to do it better than the others.

And then Nigel Mansell prior the 1988 British Grand Prix.

Originally Posted by Alain Prost

As soon as you have rain, the turbo guys' fuel worries disappear. They have a considerable power advantage, so they just crank on more wing than we can - and that helps them through the corners. I don't think the rain will help us at all.

And Gerhard Berger about himself not finishing this very race.

Originally Posted by Alain Prost

Fuel. Nothing else. By half-distance, I was already five laps the wrong side! All I could do as the race went on was reduce the boost, reduce the revs and forget about racing.

[Peter Mallett]

Originally Posted by Pingguest

Well, let have a four-time world champion have his word.



And then Nigel Mansell prior the 1988 British Grand Prix.



And Gerhard Berger about himself not finishing this very race.

There's always an exception to prove the rule.

[bjohnsonsmith]

No agreement on Qualifying.

http://www.autosport.com/news/report...lifying-change

[wolfhound]

Originally Posted by bjohnsonsmith

No agreement on Qualifying.

http://www.autosport.com/news/report...lifying-change

I think I remember Gary Anderson proposing an aggregate similar to what has been proposed.

If they are going to change from the 2015 system then an average of 2 laps seems like a good way to go.

[Mike Harte]

Yet another proposal: http://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/re...at-684341/?s=1 that will be decided on, on Thursday once the teams have had a think about it.

What seems clear though is that although all the teams favoured returning to the 2015 format, both Todt and BCE are not prepared to allow it to happen (until public demand forces them into a U-turn possibly). They deem that the format makes the result too predictable. As I have said before, they seem determined to punish successful teams for producing a car that is perfectly legal, but which others are unable to emulate.

[wolfhound]

Originally Posted by Mike Harte

Yet another proposal: http://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/re...at-684341/?s=1 that will be decided on, on Thursday once the teams have had a think about it.

As I have said before, they seem determined to punish successful teams for producing a car that is perfectly legal, but which others are unable to emulate.

Would it be better to help create circumstances where all the teams start on level playing field rather than half the field starting with 2 hands tied behind their backs in terms resources. That way there is a better chance of a more competitive field.

[Richard C]

Originally Posted by wolfhound

Would it be better to help create circumstances where all the teams start on level playing field rather than half the field starting with 2 hands tied behind their backs in terms resources. That way there is a better chance of a more competitive field.

Blasphemy!

Richard

[Deleted]

What Scrooge and that Powerless Extra Man want is basically camouflaged succest ballast and performance balancing.

Why they also want to prevent from going to 2015, is saving off faces from shame.

These idiots don't realize it's the cars and overall rules that need changing, not some trivial qualifying format.

I don't agree on "level playing fields" either, I see eye to eye with RLM's Nick Daman on this one (unlimited budgets as there have always been, + no testing restrictions), it's all the other areas that need fixing. Incl having more customer cars.

[Sodemo]

Originally Posted by wolfhound

Would it be better to help create circumstances where all the teams start on level playing field rather than half the field starting with 2 hands tied behind their backs in terms resources. That way there is a better chance of a more competitive field.

Yep, F1 tends to make a habit of sowing the seeds of its own destruction.

[Mike Harte]

Originally Posted by wolfhound

Would it be better to help create circumstances where all the teams start on level playing field rather than half the field starting with 2 hands tied behind their backs in terms resources. That way there is a better chance of a more competitive field.

I'm sorry, but please don't say that Ferrari, Red Bull or McLaren are short of resources, because it is patently not true. And Williams have the ability to be with them if they so chose.

As for the lower end of the pit lane, this is exactly how's it's always been. However, when those teams have had the right people in place who come up with brilliant ideas, they start punching way above their weight.

And although I am in favour of the financial pot being distributed far more equally, I am not sure that that would result in a change in the order. I believe that the top teams spend at least 3 times the amount that they receive from FOM to produce their leading cars, so even if the back enders received more, they still need to raise more money to compete with the big boys.

[wolfhound]

Mike just to put it in perspective if Williams were to win the championship with their drivers first and second they would still get less money than Ferrari even if Ferrari finished last. That is the sort of resource difference that needs to be sorted. Considering Williams would be somewhere in the middle of the pecking order from FOM.

I think there needs to be a much more even distribution of FOM money even if sponsorship levels are different that at least should help to even up the field.

If you look at the top 4 finishers today, they all come from Bernie's favoured teams.

[Mike Harte]

wolfhound, I don't disagree that the rewards from FOM should be more equally distributed, as I said above. However, I also don't believe that the reason that the 4 or 5 top teams are successful is because FOM pays them more. They raise far more money from outside F1, from sponsors and partners or the corporate body that spawns them, than they get from FOM's coffers, and they do this with the sole purpose of winning.

Unfortunately for the other teams, success breeds popularity so that they it is easier for them to find the resources to fund the huge overheads that they have and the massive salary bill that comes with it. The only way that you could get absolute parity, from a financial point of view, would be to pay all the teams from a central pot without letting individual teams being able to raise further funds elsewhere; basically a form of communism, that has proved a failure in virtually every instance that is has been tried.

I firmly believe that if the top 4 teams today had received the same reward from FOM, that they would still have been the top 4 teams. Unless you put in place strict financial rules that dictate that teams are only able to spend a maximum amount which would have to equal the amount that the team with the lowest budget is currently spending. That should get rid of the manufacturers for you in a stroke.

[Richard C]

Originally Posted by Mike Harte

The only way that you could get absolute parity, from a financial point of view, would be to pay all the teams from a central pot without letting individual teams being able to raise further funds elsewhere; basically a form of communism, that has proved a failure in virtually every instance that is has been tried.

To you comment above... When has it been tried? I am not talking about at country level, but the sporting level? The NFL model (highly successful) comes to mind as one that works and is in generally what you are saying has been proven to not work. Clearly my opinion is that it can and does work, but is highly unlikely to happen because it requires a large amount of cooperation to change and those in power today would be the looser so they have zero incentive to support anything like this.

Overall, I mostly agree with a number of your points. Most here agree that FOM money should be evenly distributed (a few argue that it is an "appearance fee" and that the more popular teams should get more so it is fine as is) but I do agree that equitable distribution of FOM money is not going to change the balance of power. It likely would help the health of struggling teams at the bottom. It would be part of a solution, but not the complete solution.

Richard

[Born Racer]

http://www.formula1.com/content/fom-...for-china.html

What do you think of the fact that quantities of compounds teams and drivers have chosen are available to everyone well before the next race? It's interesting as a fan to read these, but doesn't it give the teams too much time to anticipate what the others are going to do and modify their strategy based on it? Arguably, it'd be better if they were all in the dark about each others' potential strategies and then they had to react to them on the day itself, perhaps not even knowing what the others have available.

[chillibowl]

that would be a nice addition imo. would be hard to keep team mates in the dark though.

certainly we have gotten to a point where some of the predictable nature of the races can be attributed to all the modeling/simulations they run before hand. limit that ability and mistakes will be made and inspired strategy decisions made on the pitwall rewarded.

[Mike Harte]

The teams still have to guess how the competition are going to use the tyres though; are they going to use some in qualifying, in what order will they use them, or indeed will they need to use all three compounds. My thoughts are that until they line up on the grid, nobody really knows what any one else is doing; heck, until the race actually starts, they probably don't know what they will doing, either.

[Mike Harte]

Originally Posted by chillibowl

that would be a nice addition imo. would be hard to keep team mates in the dark though.

Don't forget that at least one team, McLaren run an open garage policy, with the engineers working in the centre rather than on their respective driver's far side. This is to allow a good flow of data between the sides of the garage, and I would imagine that it works well with Alonso and Button. Might not be such a good idea in some of the garages though!

[Born Racer]

Originally Posted by Mike Harte

The teams still have to guess how the competition are going to use the tyres though; are they going to use some in qualifying, in what order will they use them, or indeed will they need to use all three compounds. My thoughts are that until they line up on the grid, nobody really knows what any one else is doing; heck, until the race actually starts, they probably don't know what they will doing, either.

Yes, that's probably very often the case. They don't know how the teams will distribute those compouns over the weekend, so trying to second-guess the opposition's plans can still cause them to make some errors in their interpretation of what the others are doing.

I'm actually a bit torn on the compounds being revealed, because in a sense, knowing what the others have means that teams don't just do their own thing and then find out whose approach worked best, but go up against their opposition with some reasonable knowledge of the others and knowing that they can also adjust how they use their distribute their tyres over the weekend. So there's a little bit of cat and mouse there. Perhaps it's more interesting this way in that the teams make compound selections for certain reasons, but then have to modify how they use their allocation based on what the others have revealed. Perhaps it's a happy middle ground between knowing too little and knowing too much.

[Mike Harte]

I'm afraid that I'm back on one of my hobby-horses; in car electronics and the teams.

The FIA introduced the new allowed and disallowed communications that are permitted between the teams and their drivers, and it came into effect in Melbourne. And immediately, one team, Ferrari, was reported to the FIA for a perceived breach of the rules. They put out a pitboard for Vettel that read "- 3.2, LFS6 P1." at a point after the race had been restarted, and it was obviously a coded message, because I certainly don't know what on earth it means and I would hazard a guess that my other reader won't have a clue either.

The FIA investigated, and interviewed Ferrari, and concluded that the rules hadn't been broken. It seems as though Vettel's standardised ECU had been playing up during the race, and because the fuel strategy had to be changed because of the red flag period, they had to tell him to alter the engine mapping or something.

Now, to me that is driver coaching to put it sweetly, or providing forbidden assistance during the course of a race. What is the point of implementing a set of rules that are immediately made obsolete within hours. Surely the whole idea behind the new rules is that the driver has to work things out for himself, otherwise they might as well replace the drivers with robots (some unkind souls might say that they have already when you listen to them sometimes). If Vettel was going to run out of juice by the end of the race, or end it with more than he needed, surely that's just tough luck.

I then get on to wondering whether the FIA would have come to the same decision if the team in question had been Williams or Force India; I would certainly hope so, but I'm not convinced in my mind.

It's about time that the FIA stopped introducing these instant change of rules without taking into serious considerations all the possible consequences. They need to take far more time to make sure that the instructions are crystal clear, and that there are no grey areas that teams can exploit. Better still, in this matter, ban all the knobs, buttons and switches on the thing in front of the driver, and return it to being just a steering wheel.

/rant over

[Born Racer]

This is what it says on Autosport, Mike:

'Under normal circumstances the message would not be one the FIA would allow, but Autosport can confirm Ferrari has provided the FIA with an entirely satisfactory explanation.

During the race a number of teams had problems with fuel recalculations in the wake of the 20-minute red flag stoppage following McLaren driver Fernando Alonso's violent accident on lap 17.

Whiting confirmed to Autosport after the race the red flag and restart raised "a number of glitches" that needed to be solved.

For Ferrari, and Vettel in particular, it led to a problem with how the SECU (standard electronics control unit) software handled the stoppage, necessitating the pitboard message at the time.

The FIA therefore concluded the message was permissible and will not take any action'.

http://www.autosport.com/news/report...ed-pit-message

Certainly, inconclusive for me as to why the message was permissible. Why was the stoppage deemed to provide an exception for fuel calculation errors? Where is the force majeure in the stoppage that makes an exception of this circumstance? Is the rule too loosely written if it's going to allow for exceptions which are not written in that rule?

I think the FIA have a very flexible approach on many issues and work case by case, but it leads to dangerous precedents.

[Mike Harte]

I had read that earlier, BR, but I allowed myself to build up a full head of steam before I put digit to keyboard. The attitude just seems to be, as we used to say when we were young and stupid, that rules are meant to be broken, and the only crime is to be caught breaking the rules.

For all Todt's waffle about how toothless the FIA are, if they would just stick to the rules and regulations that they put in place - after they have considered in depth how the teams will try to find loopholes or abuse the system - then they might start governing F1 as it should be.

[Mike Harte]

Well, the battle lines seem to have been drawn over qualifying for this season; the teams have, unanimously, signed a letter to BCE, Todt and CVC, stating that they want the 2015 format reintroduced from China onwards. They indicate that they have no objection to a new system (not the new musical chairs format) being trialled, but propose that those trials only take place after the 2016 championships have been decided. Seems to make sense to me.

Meanwhile, Todt and Mr E are not keen on backing down, so we may continue to have the system that nobody wants because the dynamic (that's a laugh) duo are resisting calls for them to give the option for the teams to formally agree to return to the old system.