Darth-Piekus wrote: ↑03 Jan 2024, 18:34
This is slightly off topic but why there are people thinking that a customer team is unable to get a championship against a factory team no matter what wind tunnel they build or what technical team they bring?
Because in the early hybrid era (2014-2017), there were several substantial advantages that factory teams had over their customers, which under normal circumstances, would mean the customer would not be able to beat them (unless the customer is RedBull and the factory team is Renault).
For starters, when this power unit formula was new, substantial chassis gains could be made from having the power unit configured a certain way. Of course, the factory teams would design the power units to fit with their mechanical and aero package, whereas the customers simply had to deal with whatever configuration was given to them, even if it didn't fit 100% with their philosophy. This no longer applies because these power units have pretty much converged to an optimal design and there's barely any substantial change in terms of packaging from one year to the next.
Another straight out advantage that the factory teams had, was that there was no rule which enforced the customers would get the same quality of a power unit as the factory team. So for the first 2-3 years of these regulations, Mercedes literally had a better power unit than their customers.
And thirdly, a factory team unrestricted by a budget cap literally has more manpower which works together towards the ultimate goal of making a faster car. Mercedes and
Ferrari were spending close to half a billion euros every year. That's very difficult to compete with for almost any customer except perhaps RedBull (which is now a factory team) and McLaren (which actually wasn't doing so well financially a couple of years ago).
All of these no longer apply, so people saying customer teams cannot beat factory teams are simply stuck in the past because up until a couple of years ago, it really was extremely difficult for it to happen.
