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That's fascinating. You don't see old-school imaginative solutions like that in F1 anymore. Now, it's all about tiny bits of aerodynamics at great cost.

• shakehar 7y ago
  It is the law of diminishing returns, after 1001 races they have probably exhausted all of such simple but ingenious performance solutions. It is still a shame shame that the other teams were able to get this banned, McLaren might have been a different team today had they kept this competitive advantage.
  • maxxxxx 7y ago
    There are plenty of ideas left but usually they get made illegal quickly.
  • jerkstate 7y ago
    there is still an amazing amount of intrigue around exploring the edges of F1 rules. from just the past 10 years, competitive advantages include double diffusers, exhaust blown diffusers, F-duct, flexible front wings, split turbocharger, tubulent jet injection, 3D printed pistons, blown wheel nuts, microdrilled brake disc vents, Y250 vortex generators, grapefruit juice smelling fuel, MGU-H/MGU-K tricks, and plenty of stuff that we don't know about yet..
    • shakehar 7y ago
      True, but all these changes cost a lot of money and time.
  • beat 7y ago
    I think it's more likely that the next season, everyone else would be doing the extra pedal thing too. That's kinda how F1 works. Someone comes up with an innovation, and the next season it's either banned or universally adopted.
• close04 7y ago
  Not unlike any other field where initial advancement is exciting and then it makes way to tiny, "boring", incremental evolution. The second problem is indeed that regulation in the sport leaves less and less room for creativity in an attempt to level the playing field and prevent "abuse". I have a feeling that the regulation now looks more like a whitelist rather than a blacklist. Everybody is allowed to "innovate" the exact same thing.
  • ska 7y ago
    The tricky part about that is that you risk making a pay-to-win sport, which is very boring.
    • close04 7y ago
      True, I think this is to prevent big players who can afford it from bankrupting the competition. I guess it turns out boring either way. Although there is a silver lining: with identical cars it's down to pilot skill. I still don't see F1 or FE too exciting right now.
      • beat 7y ago
        I've found F2 to be much more exciting than F1 this year, and I think a big part of it is that the cars don't have as much "innovation", and are much closer to identical performance-wise. Barring some surprise changes or race-by-race accidents/failures, we're looking a season of 1-2 Mercedes, 3-4 Ferrari, 5-6 Red Bull. That doesn't feel like racing.
• swagasaurus-rex 7y ago
  It's so heavily regulated that professional racing is no longer an engineering challenge. Faster and more powerful cars can and are produced, but are barred for reasons of safety and, as the article demonstrates, mere choice of the governing body.
  • jcfrei 7y ago
    > It's so heavily regulated that professional racing is no longer an engineering challenge. If you look at the different approaches taken with regards to aerodynamics (particularly this season) and engines then there's still plenty of room for engineering challenges (at least in F1, I don't know about other series).
    • beat 7y ago
      Meh. Introducing DRS because they've made overtaking too difficult? That's a kludge, not an innovation.
• maxxxxx 7y ago
  I really think they need to reduce regulation so people can do creative stuff again. There used to be six wheelers or turbo vs non turbo but now it’s kind of boring. Maybe someone wants to try all wheel drive? Adrian Newey has been complaining about this for a long time. They have put in all these restrictive rules and it’s still horribly expensive.
  • rdc12 7y ago
    You would probably find that the teams would just add a hundred new flaps that give a relatively small amount of extra down-force each.
• Theodores 7y ago
  It is a formula and whenever the formula gets revised there are these opportunities created that did not exist before. There are some things that are ruled out of the essence of the formula and some things that get used to define it. For instance, the BT46 Turbofan that chucked stones out the back is not on. Meanwhile, the monocoque chassis with stressed member engine is part of the formula. The rule changes to this year have resulted in two approaches to front wing aero, right now we don't know whether the Alfa Romeo approach is actually better than the Mercedes approach. That might be mere aero, nothing important, but think how it would work if anything was allowed so long as it was safe. So there are some things that have to be ruled out such as the high nose that is better design but bad for potentially beheading drivers. If we let anything in then you could go back to the Williams FW14 and allow active suspension and a whole host of driver aids. You could even go further back and allow 6 wheelers, ground effect skirts and V12 engines. If the rules - the formula - was thus cast in stone - open to everything - then within 3-4 seasons the grid would distil into what was the de-facto winning formula. If six wheels really were better than four then every car would have six wheels. Although the rulebook appears to stifle innovation it does promote it by these small and well thought out changes that happen every few years. Having said that, I wish there was an 'anything goes' formula with a budget cap. So cars would have active aero, auto-pilot, super-capacitors, tuned-mass-dampers, low-profile tyres that weren't designed for needing pit-stops, performance enhancing drugs for the drivers, grid-girls advertising cigarettes - well maybe not some of these things that were once considered a vital part of the spectacle, but you get the idea.
  • beat 7y ago
    One interesting suggestion I saw for controlling costs was putting a cap on downforce. This would end the incredibly expensive race to the bottom aero war. Better low profile tyres would be great for performance (and looks), but it'd be at odds with how important tyre strategy has become.
    • Theodores 7y ago
      Downforce is being solved in the 2021 regulations. Ross Braun is on it, the car in front is to push the wake above the car behind rather than in its path. Tyre strategy could be about running the same set of tyres all weekend. Normal cars don't change the tyres every hour. I know that the pit stop upsets the order a bit, however, if there were two sets of tyres for the weekend and you had to use both sets in the race then that could work out fine. There is an environmental cost to lugging those tyres all around the globe, it is a bit out of touch with the times plus it doesn't say much about the product if it only lasts less than two hours. In Formula E they get this right and I am sure Michelin are getting the right message to their customers about what a great tyre they make. The pit stop could even be a mandatory toilet break if the real point of it is to just upset the racing order. Or the drivers forced to pull into the pits to drink 500ml of water. Nobody wants to be dehydrated, do they? (Or to use the olden days phrase, 'thirsty').
• jdietrich 7y ago
  Safety is a critical factor in the rulebook. The FIA want teams to be able to gain a competitive advantage through engineering, but they also want to maintain sensible corner speeds. A lot of technologies are banned in F1 simply because they work too well at making the cars faster, or they deliver speed improvements at the expense of stability.