Three scenarios, all to try to capture what the driver vs technology thing is all about.
1) Your dinner host makes a cake for dessert. One makes it from a pre-packaged mix, and one makes it from scratch. Both cooks used technologies to make their cakes. The one who used the pre-mix made theirs faster, whereas the other made their base wrong and the cake tastes horrible.
2) Two guys separately sail cross the Pacific from San Francisco to Sydney. One guy uses sat nav/GPS etc., the other uses the sun and stars/sextant. Both use technologies to get there. The guy with sat nav gets there, the other doesn't and dies along the way, after getting lost.
3) You hire two guys to tune your piano. One guy uses an electronic gizmo that checks each string. The other guy starts with a tuning fork and does the rest by ear. They both used different technologies. The guy with the electronic gizmo tunes the piano in half an hour. The ear guy takes six hours, the piano sounds horrific and he charges you twice as much.
I know which person I admire more for ability, talent, determination, etc., - the second person in each case. That's regardless of the fact that the first person got the job done quicker and, yes, possibly more precisely. The point is not just the speed but the way the person went about the task. In racing I prefer a driver who does the work for his or herself.
Fans who think this is just a Luddite approach or that it is "anti-technology" just don't get it. I've followed F1 avidly since 1973 so you can't tell me I can't deal with change.
If you value speed above all else - fine, but I hope you can appreciate that some fans like it a bit slower, for these kind of reasons.
I fixed this post for you.
You can't just declare that both methods get you the same result. They just don't, most of the time. There's a reason people invented new technology, and it isn't just to "make things faster". It prevents disasters and overall makes things far less risky. Don't forget that.
I think radically simplifying the aerodynamics would certainly help. This would significantly reduce costs, allowing less stringent regulation of other areas more relevant to car manufacturers.
One very simple rule change can achieve this. I call it the two piece mould rule.
Theoretically, the car body should be one continuous surface. i.e if it were placed inside a sphere, that sphere should be able to shrink around it to form the body of the car (the body of the car includes everything except wishbones and wheels) . There should also only be one upper surface and one lower surface. The same with the sides. i.e the shape should theoretically be able to be cast from a two piece mould.
The split of the mould could be either down the horizontal axis or vertical axis giving designers the choice of either incorporating wings or venturi's into their designs, but for obvious reasons it would be impossible to choose both.(I think).
Only the inlets and outlets for radiators, exhausts and air intakes are permitted intrusions allowed to break the surface. Oh and the cockpit of course.
The only other add on's allowed are wing mirrors and aerials.
Of course, many teams who have invested millions of pounds in wind tunnels, CFD and star aerodynamicists would have a fit. However, in the long term I believe many more interesting and fruitful avenues of engineering would appear.
Men like Adrian Newey would find ways to get around this that you'd never have thought of. That's what they get paid so much for. It might not be 'in the spirit of the rules' but it'd follow those guidelines.
Edited by mattferg, 17 February 2013 - 05:35.
The last thing to change would be to introduce a combined driver and seat weight, that way heavier drivers would not be punished even if the minimum weight were lowered. 
););)
