Post here all non technical related topics about Formula One. This includes race results, discussions, testing analysis etc. TV coverage and other personal questions should be in Off topic chat.
I believe it's also down to the lately increasing complexity of the rules and regulations of F1. I kind of pride myself to be reasonably competent as an engineer to understand day-to-day formalities from different authorities on what needs to be done in accordance with the ASME-Code, TAPPI, NORSOK, ISO-hocus-pocus and whatever environmental standards you can imagine.
But in all honesty, I cannot even begin to penetrate the FIA's technical script on how an F1 car must be built.
"I spent most of my money on wine and women...I wasted the rest"
it´s a quite normal development .a few people try to keep a horde of clever guys in check who undoubtably have spent more time interpreting the rules than those who actually wrote them.
You need to open up them rules but need to reverse some things .The team has to prove to meet some rules -say downforce absolute numbers -
Or even get rid of downforce at all .
Specify a flat plate mounted to the bottom of the car with a certain shape and length no leeway to alter or modify including a set of spacers that must remain intact at the end of the race so it´s impossible to run too low. Case solved.
Add to this the car must be homologated before thew first race and cannot be altered before race 10 .
This will stop a lot of what is going on .
My favorite would be :you can only put new things on the car after offering the new development to a backmarker for free.
Some will think this crazy, no doubt those under 30, but bear with me...I blame it on Video Games.
Over and over it comes out that many today, especially the younger generations, actually approve of cheating.
Up to 90% admit cheating on tests and think that is ok. Almost 100% of MBA graduates admit to cheating to get their degree.
When video games started to become increasingly difficult with many levels to get thru to the end there came out books on how to cheat or circumvent dangers in the game. Many times these were written by the game manufacturers, adding legitimacy. Since without the cheats it was common to not get beyond say level 3 or 4 almost every kid on the block had to learn the cheats to keep up with friends that used them to get to higher levels than they could achieve without cheating themselves.
Once this all became above board and accepted, like all bad things, it spread to other areas of life where it became not only not bad to cheat but to where you get laughed at if you don't avail yourself of every cheat you can get your hands on.
To achieve anything, you must be prepared to dabble on the boundary of disaster.”
Sir Stirling Moss
xpensive wrote:I believe it's also down to the lately increasing complexity of the rules and regulations of F1. I kind of pride myself to be reasonably competent as an engineer to understand day-to-day formalities from different authorities on what needs to be done in accordance with the ASME-Code, TAPPI, NORSOK, ISO-hocus-pocus and whatever environmental standards you can imagine.
But in all honesty, I cannot even begin to penetrate the FIA's technical script on how an F1 car must be built.
I think the FIA also struggle to pick up what is legal and illegal. We've seen many occasions where cars have passed scrutineering race after race only to be dobbed in by another team.
It's a sorry state of affairs when the people who write the rules don't even understand the rules and the people who police the rules don't understand the rules and only act thanks to a nosey neighbour. Kind of sounds like - why do we need the FIA at all?
Mark Hughes of Sky SPORTS agrees with most of you....
Motorsport, and F1 in particular, has its own code of technical ethics. The regulations are not there to be blindly followed in their intent by the competitors. They are merely the worded limitations to be worked around, and an intrinsic part of the game is to find advantages over rivals by getting around the intended limitations without breaking the wording. Only those who don't realise that this is an essential part of the competition - or rivals who have been competitively disadvantaged - would consider such action as cheating.
To achieve anything, you must be prepared to dabble on the boundary of disaster.”
Sir Stirling Moss
The regulations are a legal document, and treated as such. Everything is supposed to be spelled out specifically, but obviously every so often someone comes along and finds a "loophole", where the regulations are open to interpretation. Then most often, the loophole is closed off by a clarification of the regulations.
It would be nice to somehow put in the regulations that you are supposed to abide by the spirit of the rules, but it's impractical. That's like taking the entire criminal law system and turning it into "OK, play nice". You get that kind of statement in a court full of lawyers, and you will wind up with more interpretations that imaginable. Things just have to be spelled out specifically, and in reality you can't do that for everything. Only when you realize you miss something is a revision made.
The history of Formula One is full of examples like this, many teams have, and will continue to keep pushing the boundaries because this is a competitive sport. Personally, I have no problem with this kind of stuff, because you see, this is part of the great history of Formula One.
Once upon a time someone came up with an idea to hang wings off the cars. It wasn't forbidden in the rules, so it happened. And one day Gordon Murray built a chassis out of carbon fiber. You get the idea, innovation comes when you find something that isn't specifically banned, and try to make you car better because of it.
That same spirit of innovation and cleverness still lives on, it's just directed at a different target. These days so much is limited and spelled out, it leaves almost no scope to try something off the wall, or outside the box. So the designers and innovators have to turn to examining the regulations, and figure out what they can do, rather than what they can't do.
I'm going to turn this around and ask a question.
Imagine what it would be like if Newey was operating in the 60's, when guys like Colin Chapman in Formula One, or Jim Hall in Can Am were truly free to try out fresh and radical ideas. Imagine if Newey or his kind was free to cut loose, instead of searching for minute changes, holes in floors and changes in torque maps.
Racing should be decided on the track, not the court room.
I've always argued that the solution is to have fewer, broader rules, but for that to work, there is even more need for a sense of fair play. This idea that there is no 'spirit of the rules' is foreign to me. Of course there is a spirit of the rules, just as there is a spirit of the law. That's the reason we have judges and juries, after all. Otherwise, crimes would simply be dealt with by the police. The situation today stems from the teams' mistrust of the FIA's judicial system. For good reason, I might say, but nonetheless that's the reason for the mess they're in. The teams simply can't trust the FIA to make an impartial judgement on spirit so instead they create endlessly complex regulations that suppose to eliminate the FIA's judgement altogether.
Something else to consider: throughout 77 pages of technical regulations, the word "wing" is only written three times and never within the context of a rule that actually defines wings. Does that mean wings go against the spirit of the rules?
As far as the regulations are concerned, an F1 car is little more than a collection of allowable materials with allowable properties arranged within allowable dimensions. Only ingenuity defines the sum of those parts.
Pup wrote:The teams simply can't trust the FIA to make an impartial judgement on spirit so instead they create endlessly complex regulations that suppose to eliminate the FIA's judgement altogether.
When the ex Chief Executive Officer of Ferrari is now the current President of the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), I think people have a genuine right to mistrust the motives of the FIA. No wonder Alonso is smiling and Marko is fuming.
Pup wrote:The teams simply can't trust the FIA to make an impartial judgement on spirit so instead they create endlessly complex regulations that suppose to eliminate the FIA's judgement altogether.
When the ex Chief Executive Officer of Ferrari is now the current President of the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), I think people have a genuine right to mistrust the motives of the FIA. No wonder Alonso is smiling and Marko is fuming.
It does add probable cause to the situation- though it in no way ensures such a thing.
Yeah, there's no way to tell if bias is occurring. In business, if the ex director of my competitor suddenly become the director of the governing body that I must adhere too, I'd be asking questions. It's just suss and that's not good for a sport.
xpensive wrote:I believe it's also down to the lately increasing complexity of the rules and regulations of F1. I kind of pride myself to be reasonably competent as an engineer to understand day-to-day formalities from different authorities on what needs to be done in accordance with the ASME-Code, TAPPI, NORSOK, ISO-hocus-pocus and whatever environmental standards you can imagine.
But in all honesty, I cannot even begin to penetrate the FIA's technical script on how an F1 car must be built.
the rules took me well over a month to work out, and map out what can be done and what cant, they are so damn complex, and it only gets more complex in 2014 which I have just worked the rules out for
EDIT:
thats only bodywork, crash structures and roll structures aswell!
