Dan Fallows, April 26, 2023:
"“So the reason that a lot of the cars look the same or look very, very similar is that the regulations effectively make you design a car like that. There’s an incredibly complicated set of regulations for the front wing, for example, that are essentially making you design it in a very particular shape."
“Now we have these regulations, not only are the complicated, but they can only be regulated or only be judged by the FIA by referring to CAD as well. So part of the regulations are literally how you constructed the surfaces that go into the shape that you’ve got. Whereas in the past we had regulation boxes and as long as the car comply to those you could do what you like.”
Asked whether he felt the rules offer enough scope for innovation Fallows said: “Honestly, no, I don’t.”
Adrian Newey, Dec 29, 2023:
“To be totally honest when I first saw these regs in 2020 I was thinking this looks way too restrictive and quite dull. A lot of teams thought the same.
"We managed to apply some pressure to get a bit of a relaxation on them. Then once you get into them you realise there’s more flexibility in them when you first look at all the prescriptive boxes, gradients, rate changes etc.
"Once you get into the detail there’s actually a reasonable amount of freedom.”
It seems that the apprentice has not yet managed to beat the master, so far.