40 replies to this topic

[eronrules]

The amount of Standard spec parts in an modern F1 car is rising each year and it's becoming slightly alarming to the F1 purists (not me )

yes, using a Spec component levels the playing field and also reduces cost, specially considering current Economic situation. this move to standardize components specially help the lower half of the field as they don't have to built it in-house and diverse resource from the car's development.

but then again, F1 is supposed to be the 'Pinnacle of motorsport'. each individual teams produces unique solution to common problems that shows technical brilliance and distinguishes one team from the other.

the latest component to be standardized is 'Standard side Crash Structure', in and attempt by The FIA to abolish 'side crash structure safety taste' and to 'reduce cost'

FIA to abolish side-impact crash test to save money

http://grandprix247....-to-save-money/

having collaborated with world champions Red Bull, the FIA has now developed a standard side crash structure that must be fitted to every car from the 2014 season.

The layout and materials for the structure will be identical on every single seater next year, he wrote.

“The new rules will save money and make the cars safer,” said Schmidt.

it's all 'fine and dandy' but, for me , it's kinda invading the 'Aero department' rather than 'systems department' ... oK let me elaborate ...


previously, each team produced their own side impact structure, IIRC ferrari in 2012 re-designed theirs to be incorporated with the bargeboard winglet, while other teams developed other solution, i.e the design of side impact structure has to do with driver protection as well as aerodynamics.



it also dictates the design of the sidepod air inlet too. so, making this component spec, with the help of a rival team is kinda invading the 'what's left of design freedom aera'.

if this trend goes on, we'll soon have a spec tub, spec underfloor, spec DRS ... etc etc all in the name of cost saving.

just to remind we already have

1. Spec ECU
2. Spec tires
3. Spec break materials

so , my question is , where will this Spec-ization of F1 end???

will F1 become a 'Silhouette series' like 'DTM/Indy' with only the FW/RW/sidepods and engine the variable???

[Gyno]

F1 has not been the pinnacle of motor racing for some time now.
They all have the same engines and gearboxes and KERS.
They are all restriced and produce all the same amount of power.

[rhukkas]

With the rise of the pay driver f1 is now becoming a spec arrive and drive series... no different to your local indoor karting centre

[Jackmancer]

F1 has not been the pinnacle of motor racing for some time now.

If not F1, than what?

F1 is the pinnacle of motor racing.

[Baddoer]

I'm fine with that. To be honest, it will be very interesting to see current field running GP2 series cars.

[dau]

Don't forget the drivers are spec too, all required to be of the human variety.

[Alexis*27]

Seems pointless to have every team designing certain parts when they don't impact on performance.

But just because a large aerodynamic device is spec, it doesn't mean it will have the same effect on every car.

Otherwise everybody would just copy the Red Bull front wing and it would automatically make their cars faster.

[Slartibartfast]

Don't forget the drivers are spec too, all required to be of the human variety.

It's not fair, I coulda been a contender...

[Jon83]

F1 has not been the pinnacle of motor racing for some time now.
They all have the same engines and gearboxes and KERS.
They are all restriced and produce all the same amount of power.

Of course it has.

[JHSingo]

F1 is the pinnacle of motor racing.

"Pinnacle of motorsport" is such a tired old cliché and has not been relevant to F1 for years.

They're not the most technically advanced or the most road relevant any more, and they are barely the fastest seeing as they're being slowed down year on year.

I agree with the OP that F1 is, if it hasn't already, becoming a spec series. It is the world's most expensive spec series. Right from the start of F1 to the early 90s, the cars looked different and were fundamentally different under the skin too. Not the case today, sadly. I just find it hilarious teams are constantly going on about saving money, when the commercial side of the sport is doing anything but, with rising ticket prices, rising the price of the TV rights, etc, etc. But that's probably a different topic entirely.

The other thing that really does my nut in is how it is seemingly "unfair" or "boring" when the best car wins, that genuine innovations have to be banned to keep the playing field level. Why does Adrian Newey have to keep being punished for coming up with the best car with ever more restrictive regulations? It is really strange. I personally, as a purist, would love to see what Adrian Newey could produce if the regulations were a bit more relaxed. Think of that Red Bull X1 concept he did for Gran Turismo 5...

If F1 truly is the pinnacle of motorsport these days, the regulations should reflect that. Right now, with increasingly restrictive regulations, plus the talk that top teams will one day be forced to sell customer cars to the minnows (which seems entirely against the very principal of F1), they don't.

[SealTheDiffuser]

mandatory crash elemts together with fixing points defining sidepod shape designed by Red Bull? scary indeed

[Ross Stonefeld]

If you people saw an actual spec series you would have kittens. And then sacrifice them to whatever racing god gives you these wacked out ideas.

[billm99uk]

F1 has not been the pinnacle of motor racing for some time now.
They all have the same engines and gearboxes and KERS.
They are all restriced and produce all the same amount of power.

It's a tired cliche and, as such, I don't like it, but if F1 isn't the pinnacle, what is? Other series are even more spec'ed out than F1 these days.

[redreni]

In motorsport, the norm is for the regulations to specify what the cars have to be like and for anything not expressly permitted by the regulations to be banned by implication, or to have spec chassis and engines and parts, or for the design of the cars to be relatively free but with provision for performance balancing to ensure parity between the different cars. F1 is very much the exception in having constructor-teams and having innovation permitted by default i.e. whatever isn't expressly banned in the regulations is allowed. It's a high-cost way of going about it, and the more you tighten the rules to close off avenues of development, the greater the difficulty and therefore the cost of finding even a small amount of laptime.

In my view, the reason F1 originally became by such an enormous margin the most popular motor racing category in the world (except in the USA) is precisely because of this spirit of innovation and the extreme nature of the cars. If they continue to slow the cars down and make them heavier and heavier and go for spec chassis, all F1 will have left is its dominant market position and its momentum, it won't have the thing that got it into its dominant position in the first place. That would lead, in my view, to a period of slow but steady decline for F1.

However, I'm not a subscriber to the view that it's already effectively a spec series. In a way, it doesn't much matter how restrictive the rules are, or how many or few areas of the car are open to development, the teams are still going to use all the resources at their disposal to develop in whatever areas they can, and there are still areas that are open for development. And anyone who can think of a way of making the cars go faster that the rulemakers did not envisage is worth his weight in gold, even though innovative ideas are likely to be banned after a short time. It's still worth developing things like FRIC suspension or F-ducts or exhaust-blown exhausts because, by the time the FIA and other teams cotton on and copy the idea and/or ban it, the team that thought of the idea has already taken the advantage from it.

[Der Pate]

F1 was the pinnacle of motorsport in the 70s and 80s, but had to be regulated because of safety. In the 90s it was still the pinnacle but became more and more expensive.

The way to Spec series was already begun, when the engine-development for example was limited, or such things like grooved tyres came... Newey just stated in an interview, that he is looking forward to the "new" F1 in 2014, but there are so many regulations, that it is were hard to be creative...

It´s the way, how people define the "pinnacle of motorsports". Is it a series like Indycar, where almost every car is the same and every driver can win. Or is it F1 of the 70s or 80s, where a genius in the pits could win the championship with one idea. Personally I liked the 70s, because you never knew, how a car would appear the next race.

[Ross Stonefeld]

How is a grooved tire spec? They even had a tire war. There wasn't even a size limit initially.

[Afterburner]

It's not fair, I coulda been a contender...

If you read this post in a corny Marlon Brando accent, it's hilarious.

[mlsnoopy]

For me the easiest way to get the cost under control would be if Fia just limited the amount of downforce car can produce.

[billm99uk]

F1 was the pinnacle of motorsport in the 70s and 80s,

Which isn't really defining what the "pinnacle of motorsport" is today, is it?

Wasn't around for the 70's but personally I found the 80's extremely boring at times, due to the profusion of "Senna/Prost/Piquet/lead driver in the top car sticks it on pole and drives away into the distance from lap 1" type races. Which is precisely what you'd expect in a 'pure' development series. Nostalgia is a great thing because people can forget all the boring bits.

Edited by billm99uk, 25 July 2013 - 15:17.

[Shambolic]

For me the easiest way to get the cost under control would be if Fia just limited the amount of downforce car can produce.

Or, you know, they could limit the amount of money a team can spend.

Or is that too obvious a way to control costs?

[mlsnoopy]

Or, you know, they could limit the amount of money a team can spend.

Or is that too obvious a way to control costs?

You do know that small teams are problematic not the big guys.
The rules should be written in a way that would allow someone to make a competitive car for small amount of money.
And like I said, limiting the amount of downforce would be the easiest way to do that.

[Ross Stonefeld]

You can only limit downforce in the rulebook. And they've been doing it for years and the teams always find a way to gain it back.

[August]

I think the rules should be written so that they help to cut costs but leave space for innovation. F1 should never become a spec series.

[Ross Stonefeld]

There's a massive massive gap between 'innovation' and spec. Innovation is coming up with things like wings or slick tires or turbos. Exhaust blown diffusers leave me bored.

[redreni]

For me the easiest way to get the cost under control would be if Fia just limited the amount of downforce car can produce.

When? In parc ferme? I think you'll find most F1 cars produce no downforce during scrutineering. It wouldn't be a simple matter to measure it on the track.

And even if it could be done, it wouldn't do anything to control costs because there are other ways to find performance without adding downforce (systems like the mass damper, the F-duct, double-DRS or FRIC suspension don't add downforce but they still add performance). You can work on improving mechanical grip or reducing drag or, from next year, increasing engine efficiency or performance.

This generalises; banning spending money on particular things will never lead to teams not spending the money. It will always lead to them spending the money on something else that will give them performance. So if you don't let them spend it on track testing they'll spend it on wind tunnel time. If you don't let them spend it on wind tunnel time they'll spend it on CFD. As long as there is a way of spending money and getting some sort of laptime benefit out of it, teams will spend all the money that's available to them.

If you want to control costs you have to have an enforceable regulation that limits overall spending on the car, whether by the teams or by parent companies or contractors or however else the teams might try to hide their spending. When F1 was effectively a gentlemens' club with a load of privateer teams plus Ferrari, it might have been possible to get agreement to this as long as it was understood by everyone that Ferrari would be allowed to break the spending limit and get away with it. But in modern F1, with major car manufacturers and fizzy drinks magnates and the like controlling the teams, it is clear that the big players will not tolerate the loss of their comparative advantage, which is that they have more money than the small guys. And even the small guys don't seem too keen on the idea of enforceable cost controls because of the intrusive nature of the auditing that you'd need.

The upshot of which is we can forget about cost control and we just have to hope that the next time there's a financial crisis and all the big guys pull out, there will be enough people like Ross Brawn and Peter Sauber around to dip into their own pockets to rescue the teams and keep the show on the road.

[Fastcake]

I think the rules should be written so that they help to cut costs but leave space for innovation. F1 should never become a spec series.

It's easy to say that though.

[dau]

F1 was the pinnacle of motorsport in the 70s and 80s, but had to be regulated because of safety. [...]

You mean when the majority of the grid was using the same engine?

[Der Pate]

You mean when the majority of the grid was using the same engine?

Engine is only one part of the car! I remember the Lotus 72! The fan-car! Wing-cars! And so on...

[BobbyRicky]

Indycar is a spec-series, and is far more entertaining this year than F1 has been.

Edited by BobbyRicky, 25 July 2013 - 16:44.

[Der Pate]

Indycar is a spec-series, and far more entertaining this year than F1 has been.

But is it the "pinnacle of racing"? It´s a question of definition...

[Atreiu]

You can only limit downforce in the rulebook. And they've been doing it for years and the teams always find a way to gain it back.

OTOH, they could use the spec ECUs to impose power limits and then mandate a fuel tank of a specific given capacity. 900hp, 100 litres (or whatever that is in kg) and whatever engine you feel like, KERS, turbo, V8, V12. Bring it on.

Sounds much better and unrealistic than a budget or downforce cap and could still provide huge technical challenges and marketing opportunities for manufacturer involvement...

[Ross Stonefeld]

OTOH, they could use the spec ECUs to impose power limits and then mandate a fuel tank of a specific given capacity. 900hp, 100 litres (or whatever that is in kg) and whatever engine you feel like, KERS, turbo, V8, V12.

Bring it on.

What, the magical sponsorship fairies?

[Atreiu]

They could hlep as well, but still...

Who is/will sponsor Formula E, by the way?

[Ross Stonefeld]

I'd love to know, because I can't see where the money is coming from at the moment.

And their budgets are about GP2 level, not F1.

[trogggy]

For me the easiest way to get the cost under control would be if Fia just limited the amount of downforce car can produce.

How does that work?
Adding downforce is easy. Adding it without greatly increasing drag not so much.
Reducing the max downforce wouldn't reduce costs by 1 cent as far as I can see. Teams would put just as much effort into aero.

[redreni]

Indycar is a spec-series, and is far more entertaining this year than F1 has been.

I like Indycar but, by being a spec series, it rules itself out of being considered the pinnacle of motorsport, in my view. And (CVC take note) it has shown that having good close racing doesn't guarantee massive viewing figures. I watch it when I can, but overall the viewing figures for Indycar are not very good.

And, as an aside, can I jus ask about the appearance of the spec Indycar? I'd have thought one of the upsides of having a spec chassis is you would at least be able to make the car look good - because there's no aero development allowed you won't get the teams making the cars ugly by chasing downforce. Given that, why are the cars so hideous?

[beqa16v]

Sorry for bringing this back, but I thought it would be better to reflect on this one rather than open a new topic. I am more and more convinced that F1 should become an almost spec series. It is believed to be the driver focused championship unlike WEC for instance and the drivers make very little impact these days. F1 should have as many common parts as possible, like brakes, wings, diffusers, floors, suspension parts, electronics etc. Costs will be probably 5 times less if not more (no need for huge design and manufacturing teams) and racing will be much much more interesting. It might scare some manufacturers but new private teams will rise and manufacturers will always stay as engine suppliers even if they stop competing as teams.

 

Leave that development race WEC which is very technological at the moment. I am sure that we all would enjoy watching all current drivers racing against each other in GP2 cars more than watching a silver Mercedes driving away into the distance; or trying to understand the stupid complicated rules which are required to somehow prop up the dull racing the current system has to offer.

[ardbeg]

Many years have passed since I was excited about the launch of a new car. They look basically the same and whatever new development they have done is either the same on all cars or a bunch of hush hush that completely fail to give me a hard on. The tech regs are so strict that the only thing that can surprise with a new car is the livery. 

 

F1 must make a decision - aim for spec or innovation. Right now it is neither.

[Wuzak]

Sorry for bringing this back, but I thought it would be better to reflect on this one rather than open a new topic. I am more and more convinced that F1 should become an almost spec series. It is believed to be the driver focused championship unlike WEC for instance and the drivers make very little impact these days. F1 should have as many common parts as possible, like brakes, wings, diffusers, floors, suspension parts, electronics etc. Costs will be probably 5 times less if not more (no need for huge design and manufacturing teams) and racing will be much much more interesting. It might scare some manufacturers but new private teams will rise and manufacturers will always stay as engine suppliers even if they stop competing as teams.

 

Leave that development race WEC which is very technological at the moment. I am sure that we all would enjoy watching all current drivers racing against each other in GP2 cars more than watching a silver Mercedes driving away into the distance; or trying to understand the stupid complicated rules which are required to somehow prop up the dull racing the current system has to offer.

 

No. There are enough spec series already.

[Pete_f1]

Just a spec, simple and uncomplicated front wing would do me.

[A.Fant]

I often fantasize about a formula that is completely unaffiliated with the FIA and FOM, where the regulations are only restricted by the drivers and the insurance companies. Make the fastest car you can by any means you want, as long as the people whose safety is put at stake (and the companies that are financially liable in case something goes wrong) believes it is acceptable.

 

I'm more and more convinced that "limiting development" in the name of cost savings actually benefits the big budget teams as these are the ones with political clout and can define the regulations. By limiting what you can do through strict and narrow regulations you remove the possibility of disruptive innovations in favor of refinement of specific known components. Having more resources are beneficial in both environments, but I believe that it is more beneficial in the latter than the former.

 

It is just one season so it is hardly statistically significant, but I'm going to use 2009 as an example.

 

Entirely new regulations meant that there were a lot of avenues to develop. If free regulations meant that big teams can spend their way to the front you'd expect to large gaps in competitiveness and the teams ordered neatly by budget. Instead we got the season where the range of car performance was the closest to to bottom in the history of F1 and car competitiveness shift hugely from race to race since the cars had very different characteristics. At the Belgian GP the top 15 in qualifying was covered by 0.756s on a 105s lap.

 

And while big budgets still were a positive factor in performance (I consider Brawn a big budget team since the car was developed by Honda), Williams managed to have a car that was comparable to the Ferrari and Toyota over the season and better than big budget BMW and Renault - and they did so with the weakest engine on the grid. Force India was generally the slowest team but had a car that was top-3, if not outright fastest considering their weak driver lineup, on tracks that suited it (Belgium and Italy).

 

Regulatory freedom increases the likelihood of getting it wrong, making a huge budget less of a guarantee of competitiveness, which in turn would make manufacturers less inclined to spend their way to success with bloated budgets.

Edited by A.Fant, 16 March 2016 - 15:12.