here's kind of a stupid quesiton: why does it necessitate an increase in spending for F1 though? they're throwing around stupid money for extremely marginal returns. Is it simply a case of inflation? or do teams just have too much money lying around, so they just throw it at anything?
It seems to me that if they laxed the rules *just* a little bit, that would give the smaller teams more latitude to be competitive because they might be able to exploit something the larger teams haven't. Instead what we have now is ferrari throwing 500 million euros at increasing the performance of a bolt nut because the rules have effectively curtailed development everywhere else.
It is a very GOOD question. But that is, both the aforementioned 'Law of the disadvantageous advantage' and 'the law of the diminishing returns'. There is so much common knowledge amongst F1 engineers, there is such 'a body' of knowledge, it is almost impossible to have a brilliant idea and with that beat the competition. All the F1 cars - even the Marussias - are so sophisticated that getting more speed out of them is like trying to get water pressed out of a stone.
That used to be different. Take the wingcars of Lotus, the Lotus 78 and Lotus 79. Lotus in 1976 was in deep, deep ****. Chapman had little money. The results were awfull. Then he and his engineers got the idea of a wingcar. Meaning: a car with venturi-channels under the car, skirts, blablabla.
Now the interesting part of the wingcar is three-fold.
1. Why did not anyone think of this sooner? The Bernouli (?)-effect was known to most engineers. All the engineers in F1 - especially Mauro Foghieri and Gordon Coppuck - were trying to create negative lift under the car or at least a suction effect. But how to really create that, they could not figure it out, even when (see point 2). That says something how simple their ideas were.
2. When Lotus finally came up with the 78 in 1977... not one (!) engineer in F1, not one (!) journalist, not (!) pundit said: 'Hey! You know what Lotus have done? They've created downforce with airchannels under the car.' They saw the car... they could even see the underside of the car on several occasions (because Andretti now and then had the tendency to crash). And they did not get it, untill late in 1978... when it was too late.
3. Lotus did not understand, fully, the effects of ground-effect. The first wingcar had the downforce too much on the front of the nose. The second wingcar (the 79) was by way not stiff enough to deal with the forces generated. (And when Maurice Philippe and Andretti found out, they talked to Chapman untill they were blue in the face to stiffen the car, but to no avail. Chapman just was not interested in improving the car.)
Those days are long behind us. The only engineer, I think, who sometimes can invent things of which the other engineers say 'wtf' is Newey. For example, nobody has yet figured out how the hell he is able to flex the front of the Red Bull car so much. All the other engineers, as you say rightly, have to throw money at the car with very marginal returns.
A possible solution? My idea would be:
1. A mandatory minimum six cm rideheight, front and rear, electronically controlled by the FIA. This would seriously f@#$ up both underside and upside aerodynamics, making huge investments in aero less profitable and investments in mechanical grip more profitable. And what is the nice thing about suspensions? Anyone could see them and copy them. Ahaaaaaa.
2. Mandatory single-element front wing. Clearly.
3. Big rear wheels (as Gary Anderson suggested, and Pirelli). More stable cars, bigger wakes in the rear, all clear.
4. Ten year rule-stability, NO CHANGES IN THE ENGINES! The longer the engines can be re-used, the lower the costs will get.
Edited by Nemo1965, 25 June 2014 - 09:49.
