Once every several years we see something of an invention in F1. Okay, it's not as spectacular as it used to be, no more first-time-use of a mid-engine or ground effect, but quite important developments nonetheless, given the restrictions imposed by the rules.

Last year it was the diffusor that gave Brawn (and others) an advantage in the first part of the season. One may argue about whether the DDD was within the rules or not, but even those who have argued it have to admit that this was a rare sight in today's F1: somebody came up with a solution that most of the others have not found. And, IMHO, it was only fair that they got away with it and that the car with the invention won the championship. After all, most of us agree that it is that engineer's inventiveness that's missing in F1 today! So finding that 'unfair advantage' and capitalizing it is what F1 once was about, and thanks to the extensive rule changes that was exactly what happened last year.

So the DDD is well known terrain this year. Even though teams have shown different versions to implement it, it most likely will not be as decisive this year as it was in 2009.

So, did anybody spot some invention/development that might bring the unfair advantage this year?

I am quite intrigued by Scarborough's explanation [1] of McLaren combining the slotted rear wing with the shark fin, adding an air-intake and channeling air from the airbox right into/behind the rear wing (that's what I have understood what this might be about...). I haven't followed the McLaren thread, but I think some were puzzled about why they attached the shark fin and what that split air intake was about.

Within F1's restriction (should this really be the way scarbs assumes) I think combining both developments, the shark fin and the slotted rear wing, into something that is bigger than the sum of its parts is quite a good invention. I am not a McLaren fan, but I like to see inventiveness in F1, so I hope this will work out and they will be rewarded.

Any other observations?

[1] http://scarbsf1.wordpress.com/2010/02/18/m...-and-shark-fin/

EDIT: added link

Ferrari have canted their engine forward a few degrees to allow more room for the diffuser to sweep up behind. Weird engine mountings seem to be regularly experimented with, and rarely overcome the inherent problems of balance, but Ferrari seem to have theirs working. Clever. It ought to be difficult for the other teams to copy, considering how the packaging of the whole rear end all works towards this effect. And the you're not allowed a gearbox redesign for a good few races anyway.

You seem to be suggesting that anything a team invents/develop to improve performance is unfair. I call it being clever and is exactly what all the teams are or should be striving for.

The only unfair advantage would be if a team were allowed to run with something that was clearly illegal.

I probably should gave put it into quotation marks, but I thought it was obvious that I am not talking about a rule-breaking kind of unfair advantage (Tyrrell in the 80s, Benetton allegedely in the 90's, etc.), but about an invention within the rules that gives a team an advantage that the others might probably not compensate with other means within a reasonable time frame.

Such as Ferrari's idea Risil pointed out: if this really brings some tenths (I would love to hear what others have to say about this), other teams would have a hard time copying it, most probably they would have to wait until 2011, giving Ferrari what you might call an 'unfair advantage' (in a tongue-in-cheek fashion).

The term "unfair advantage" is a well known racing term which does not imply cheating but rather finding a technical loophole and thus something that will make the car (much) quicker than the competition. Chapman was well known for always searching for such an "unfair advantage".

The term "Unfair advantage" implies cheating.

Not necessarily. Engine freeze is opening for many legal loopholes. Mercedes suddenly had the best engine last year, for reasons unknown (although I suspect that had it been Ferrari instead of Mercedes it would have led to many pages of discussion around here) and someone will have the best engine this year. The "unfair" part is that whoever is behind in HP, fuel efficiency or whatever, will not have a chance to catch up. Road closed. Engine frozen. Rumors is that FiA asked Mercedes to detune their engine after Monza and that is hardly fair either. I would say that if the rules contains loopholes that is unavailable to some teams, it could be considered "unfair" if those loopholes exists due to sloppy rule-writing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Donohue

I would just call it an advantage because a manufacturer has done a better than another. I will agree that the whole concept is fundamenatlly flawed and the only ones who couldn't seem to spot the flaws were the FIA.

FIA did not ask Merc to detune their engine. What they said is they would not agree to any catchup updates, and if the teams wanted to equalise the engines then they would have to agree amongst themselves to detune the better ones.

Could we just agree, for the sake of this thread, that we don't talk about cheating here?

I would say that it is unfair if a reliability upgrade results in a power boost. And no, you do not know if FiA asked Mercedes to detune their engine.

If it's within the rules then I don't call it unfair, but the rules are poorly written. And neither do you, anyone can make up a rumour. There are plenty of reports saying that teams cannot upgrade, but can detune. I can't say I've seen a single report that says the FIA asked Merc to detune.

Still the thing is Mclaren MP4-25 with this apparatus must have been quicker and threatening if Newey was involved.

Mclaren's car looks like a accumulation of odd inventions, like not knowing if it works in practice, and only by doing get to know things better.

If so, how effective is this apparatus? We will se in Australia!

The rules are clear, you are not allowed to make changes to the engine that affects performance. And no, there is no reports, there are rumors.

To be fair it wasn't an invention or new innovation as it is a rather old concept and well used.

Almost ALL teams know about and had a double diffuser, they just thought it was against the rules so didn't pursue it, so it wasn't a solutioon that most others have not found.

The "blown" rear wings seem to circumnavigate the two element rule for the rear wing in a way that I don't understand...

I don't have any technical background, so this is just a guess about what I understood is going on (tech buffs will probably laugh at this!):

If you use more elements with the same given surface, you have more slots. These slots allow air to pass to the backside of the wing, making sure the airflow stays attached to the wing as it passes behind it. If you don't use several elements and thus have spaces that allow airflow to pass, at some angle your airflow will detach from the backside of the wing and cause it to stall.

As the number of elements is now limited, you are limited in the angle that you may put these elements, because they risk to stall at a certain point, making you lose all its downforce (rather suddenly I presume). Blowing air through the small slot allowed makes sure that the airflow stays attached to the wing's backside, which in turn allows you to put the surface at a steeper angle without risking it to stall. In the end you have the same surface area as the other teams, but you may drive it at a steeper level without risking stalling, which should give you a downforce advantage.

I'd call the thread "Fair Advantage" rather than unfair.

If every team has the same groundwork on rules to work with, and one team comes up with a novel solution, it's in all fairness to them, isn't it?

I don't think it is unfair that a loophole is exploited, and is ruled by the FIA to be legal.

It's impossible for us to judge.

The idea behind the DDD wasn't new. Didn't Ross Brawn with OWG contact the teams and say that something like this could happen? This whole issue is based off whether or not the FIA allows it or not. And how much teams want to take that risk. And then whether or not the FIA punishes them or sides with them. It's a big part of F1, especially with being friends behind closed doors.

Williams were punished in the past (Canada and brakes or something?) Honda got punished harshly for it (fuel tanks). Renault got punished for it (mass damper). Brawn and the others got away with it. Redbull were pinged for flexi rear wings in Spanish GP 2007, no punishmen but had to remove themt. But there had been talk of flexi wings from the top teams for years before that. Ferrari in Malaysia 2006 had to change a part of their front wing for the same reason. Sometimes it's allowed, sometimes it's not. It's completely in the FIA's control and it's very random. Roll a dice and see what happens.. basically.

It's hard to be innovative with the rules the way they are. It's not innovation, it's exploiting loopholes and hoping you get away with it. Some teams see a reason to take a risk, others don't. The mass damper was probably one of the best in terms of being innovative. It was banned on grounds of being a movable aerodynamic device, even though it doesn't touch the air and is a part of the suspension. Meanwhile there were flexi wings going on that didn't start getting harshly tested until the following seasons. It's all down to whether the FIA likes it or not. You just hope for consistancy, so that it's not a situation where one teams innovation is rewarded, while another teams innovation is banned. Williams for example could probably afford to take that risk right now, because Bernie and co would hate to see them leave after all the other teams that have left recently.

I guess I could have made this whole post shorter by saying.. it's not about engineering or innovation, it's about politics.

The McLaren rear wing, if the rumours are true, might give them an advantage.

It's certainly better than not having one

I is just kiddin

No...you are missing the point!

I hope it does. There aren't many unfair advantages left to be had.

Wheel nuts. I think the new rules clearly focus on both tire management and pit stops, and the team which can save, say, a tenth of a second could be the winner. Look at DTM - pitstops with re-fuelling in the 3 second range. A radical new type of wheel fastener could be a real breakthrough, especially at tracks with short pit lanes..

Agreed - the new Ferrari ones look kind of crazy. Hopefully they don't go with the dodgy looking wheels.

Agreed. Though I don't think it's all about friends, but more about "what is on top" and is F1 perceived as a fair sport? What if last year only McLaren and Ferrari had DDD? I think they would have been banned tbh, because they were the top teams in the years before that. Renault same deal: 2005 all good> 2006 punished. So last year it was Brawn, Williams and Toyota, not exactly the top teams looking at 2008. It was good for F1 for McLaren and Ferrari to bite some dust. (Honda with double tanks were really cheating though)

This may sound all like conspiracy bullcrap but in truth it's not that far off. I won't call it unfair though, it's part of what makes F1 so interesting. Politics and racing should go hand in hand in F1 or it's not F1.

Thanks for the link! That book is certain to be an interesting read.

As far as this season goes, I think we can only wait until the first few races to see what advantages are apparent.

I would tend to agree, however when a pit stop is now just around 3-4seconds the main variable still becomes the human, but now to a much larger degree. Ferrari, Mclaren and whoever can design something to change tyres quicker but in the end IMO for any real addvantage would have to rely on almost robotic response because the pitstop is now that short.

Aside from that, are not the wheel guns standard? In which case any addvantage would come with the wheel nut.. it then becomes a very expensive task to design a new wheel nut which be tightened and loosened at a quicker rate yet still be able to cope with the torque of the wheelgun.

To me, the gains in a new wheel nut design are just too small. I think human error in pitstops will play a much larger role this year. They no longer have the 6-8 seconds so pressure will be high, and we know how easily pit errors happen.

Any addvantage a team is going to get this year will imo come from fuel useage, and general mechanical preservation such as brakes and tyres.

All in all, the unfair addvantage imo is likley to come from a driver who can run a quick race whilst keeping each of these aspects in mind.

Risil's link to the great Mark Donohue doesn't apparently point directly to his book "The Unfair Advantage". In it "unfair" doesn't relate or imply in any way to cheating. It's about any legal way to get more speed. Setup, car developments, especially one's that exploit loopholes, and so on are what Mark called his "unfair" advantage. Colin Chapman with the Lotus 25 used monocoque construction for lightness and rigidity and an unfair advantage. Every team in racing looks for an "unfair advantage" rather than rely on their driverto be better than the opposition. I'm kind of supplied by the confusion and lack of awareness of this principle here at this forum. The book was once a famous racer's "bible".

Good lord, please stop arguing about whether 'unfair advantage' is the proper term or not. We all get the gist of what the OP is saying, right?!

Anyways, its hard to say just yet. We've gotta wait until the season starts before anybody shows that an innovation is actually worth anything, ya know?

I'm not sure about that McLaren wing. I'm no aerodynamicist, but dividing the flow (as it appears to me) over a compromised static structure (again, I'm not sure but is that fin actually moulded into the upper?) doesn't appeal to me as a way of maximising the turbulence from the front. Unless of course it's all about the diffuser, which it probably is looking at the size of that f***er. I'd prefer flexibility myself. Still, it's just the test car at the moment...

Anyway, rear wing or diffuser, I don't see a major advantage there.

In fact, a french insider said that McLaren and Red Bull are already doing the same:

http://blog.autoplus.fr/moncet/2010/02/11/bravo-frank/

Thanks for that link, I didn't know that.
However, as far as Red Bull is concerned, apparently he isn't sure and his inside sources would neither deny nor confirm it. Still, he says (if I understood him correctly) that there were interesting changes to the rear suspension (compared to the 2009er), which might have been made in order to accomodate the new engine position.

Apparently it is not a question whether Red Bull has changed the engine position or not - it is only whether the whole engine has moved up or whether only the rear part has been moved up, which would be similar to Ferrari's design.
But: in either case the rear suspension layout would be likely to have changed. I cannot see how we, from the outside, could see whether it has been changed in a way to accomodate either solution a) or solution b).

Scarborough on further rumours concerning McLaren's airflow and rear wing:
http://scarbsf1.wordpress.com/2010/02/27/m...snorkel-rumour/

This seems rather sci-fi, and to regulate downforce with the driver's KNEE seems somehow failure-prone. Would be kind of a sophisticated reincarnation of Chaparrel's huge wing, and this was banned with reference to what might happen if a driver enters a corner and the downforce doesn't kick in.

But if McLaren is really up to something, I wonder how these possibilities to make wings stall have been overlooked for 40 years, while the teams were searching all the time to have little drag on the straights but high downforce in corners.

Does anybody have top speed figures from the tests? Were these recorded at all?

if true, thats a fantastic idea by mclaren

This pic here makes me doubt it has anything to do with the driver's left leg:

http://www.autosport.com/gallery/photo.php/id/13246101

If the snorkel's function was to be regulated in accordance to the driver braking or not, why have the possibility to also install it over the right knee? Just to fool the opposition?

For me it seems as the team would be able to change the snorkel from left to right, but if there were any channels to guide the air or some other sophisticated devices, this would demand quite some work to do. So why two holes to mount the snorkel?

If only one were needed, they'd obviously only make 1 hole in that part of the chassis, because, I assume, every new hole reduces the structural strenght.

I'm quite puzzled...

Fantastic if it works. Certainly interesting.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/motorspor..._medium=twitter

Apparently Ferrari and Red Bull think McLaren's wing secret is about stalling the wing, thereby gaining 10 km/h straightline speed.

That would be quite a lot! I hope it will be declared legal, because at last we have some innovative thinking going on...

you'd think mclaren have already asked the fia about this especially after what happened last year

I am not so sure that I like the idea of the driver becoming a part of an adjustable aerodynamic solution. It opens up so many new areas that borders movable aero just when it seemed that the flexi thing was taken care of. I can not really see that it is more legal than a flap that was opened and shut by the push of a button and something like that would immediately be declared illegal.

I wouldn't think that this has anything to do with the snorkel necessarily. It's more about the divided airbox.
I cannot see how they could channel the air that passes through that tiny snorkel through the whole car so that it makes a difference.

What enters through the split air box, however, could be enough to change anything. It seems much more obvious to take the air there rather than at the front of the car.

Only problem is, that the valve would be a moving aerodynamic devise. You might as well have the same button alter the front and rear wing angles. If its adjustable, its illegal (except for the front wing 2 time per race adjustment).

If the driver ducked his head or moved his head - and increased air flow - that would work, and would not be illegal. Its possible to have an increased airflow stall a wing, and stop downforce ... everything else would be illegal.

Although flex for aero improvement has always been illegal, the problem is that the rules allow it within prescribed measurement limits. So something flexing somewhere, that effects airflow, is allowed, because no one has figured out to measure it. That's the F1 measuring system - an invitation to move around the poorly framed rules. If the rules stipulated that any innovation had to be approved, then things like the DD would never have happened. And if the rules body published an innovation request list, controversy might be avoided. But of course controversy is a means for free publicity, which increases ratings, and hence revenues. Bernie wanted publicity and Mosley went along with the need.

I hope innovation will be rewarded, not banned.

As far as I recall on the MP4-25 unveiling, Whitmarsh mentioned that FIA was consulted every step of the way, even though this was thought to mean the DDD, he might have being onabout the Wing.

Me too. They've banned enough innovation in this "pinnacle" of motorsport.

The FIA had a much more innovative set of rules available for this season - if a team met a budget restriction. But the teams did not want an exact budget cap ... hence the continuance of the development rules regime.

By keeping the rules almost constant, the big teams are favoured, due to their resources to incrementally improve the car.

If we really wanted innovation, IMO there is but one way - just allow so much fuel per race, supply the fuel, have safety standards, apply a minimum weight, maximum length and width (perhaps no maximum length) put in a ballasted driver weight (I don't like jockey weighted drivers), have a Centre of Gravity point in the car, and leave everything else open. That way you'd get lots of innovation.

Mercedes were using a divided airbox too. Maybe part of their Bahrain upgrade package?

That will create different approaches, which is in effect not necessarily a innovation.

Different approaches are what distinguishes F1 among the others IMO.