henry wrote: ↑17 Jun 2022, 11:56
Sieper wrote: ↑17 Jun 2022, 11:16
all of the above, who knows, a suspension is to suspend a car, not to get aero benefit. Mercedes was dropping the rear on the straights and was opening its main wing plane. How exactly they achieved that not even the FIA was able to determine. Main plane bending is now certainly not going to be possible anymore as separate wing end plates were eliminated. But if I remember correctly you also simply declined the notion on that. So why do we have this simple one piece mainwing now. Because that can be policed better, as can be simple suspension systems. Any potential of reintroducing more complex systems also means FIA wont be able to police its workings, again. Plus, it seems to me the car was already developed for getting those systems back. Steiner even mentioned that in his interview yesterday (with the wording "but I don't think that was the plan" (so why mention it then, classic tactics).
The suspension has been subordinated to aerodynamics for decades. Suspension member positioning and their shapes, characteristics of heave, pitch and roll, are all first conceived for aero benefit and then the suspension team’s remit is to suspend the car as best they can with those constraints. (Actually it’s probably more of a dialogue but the aero team have by far the largest voice).
And why shouldn’t Mercedes’ rear have squatted, after all the rest of the field had huge rear suspension travel designed to increase downforce at low speed and reduce it at high. (It also had some traction benefits, because the suspension teams’ whispers sometimes got heard).
As @DchemTech has said a few times, the regulations should constrain the goal not the means. If you don’t want squat define squat and say what’s allowable and what isn’t.
Finally the 3 Scrutineers is a red herring. The detailed scrutiny is done by the teams, for themselves and each other, the FIA only look at a few items in general and a larger number randomly. If the teams take a risk on the random elements the penalties are harsh, see Brazil last year.
My opinion is still the same, the FIA changed the balance of tools between aero and suspension making it much more difficult to get a winning compromise. Well done Red Bull for doing best at that compromise but the window to achieve that is so small that the goal of closer racing is potentially a complete fail. I’m assuming Ferrari will be affected more by the TD at Canada than Red Bull. It’s Mercedes in 2014 again, and that’s not what the doctor ordered.
Agreed. We've had an era where catching up was close to impossible due to bad PU rules. Now we have a similar situation but focused on suspension/aero, having an adverse effect on close racing which ultimately was the goal.
So if stricter rules does not work, why not open the technical regulations a bit and allow for more innovation? Make that window, as you say, bigger.
I totally agree there is too much focus on
how something should be done. Instead the focus should be on
what should be done and police that. Let the teams figure out how they want to do it.
