I personally believe that aero will become less important if the current regulations are maintained. Since teams will have developed the current breed of aero to the limit, the engine will become the big performance differentiator. That will make the mechanical side far more important to eke out decreases in laptime.
Red Bull might still have an advantage, because Newey will be able to adapt his superfast RB5 family to the different engine. However, if someone else has an engine that has +30hp, then we might be in for all out war.
bhallg2k wrote:Many have said the sport could either choose to cut costs or choose to develop technology, but not both, because the only proven cost-cutting strategy has been the restriction of technology. It seems the sport made its decision, and it's a perfectly valid one, too, even though I really wish things had gone the other way.
As Mosely proposed back in 2009 i think only restricting the budget and without any technical restrictions would be a wishful and rightfull aproach. everybody can do what he wants to as long as he is within the budget.
That would be great if it could work. But, I'm of the mind that purely budgetary restrictions are unenforceable. There are just too many ways around such rules.
McMrocks wrote:I'm not sure what this change means.
1. The teams will reach the optimum, hence the engine becomes the performance differentiator according to raymondu
1.2 or RB will still be dominant
2. We will still need DRS to simulate racing
3. At the start of every GP at least one car will have a puncture
4. We will see the same teams at front as now (if the engine performance is almost equal)
5. We'll see faster lap times than with the previous rules for 2014
6. We will have these ***** high noses (my Opinion)
We would still need DRS regardless, well not need. But they would still have included DRS. It's not like the 2014 regulations were including ground effect or anything radical. They were just slowing the cars down and making the wings smaller. The aero rule changes weren't even that radical, compared to 2008-2009 that is. All they were doing was slowing the cars down, evidently the FIA came to their sense that these 2014 cars would be as slow as a GP2 car whilst costing like 200x more, and so decided to keep the big wings and other such things.
flmkane wrote:I personally believe that aero will become less important if the current regulations are maintained. Since teams will have developed the current breed of aero to the limit, the engine will become the big performance differentiator. That will make the mechanical side far more important to eke out decreases in laptime.
Red Bull might still have an advantage, because Newey will be able to adapt his superfast RB5 family to the different engine. However, if someone else has an engine that has +30hp, then we might be in for all out war.
What it does is give teams like Ferrari and Mercedes a better chance of clawing back some pace via the engine regulations if they can't catch teams like Red Bull aero-wise. I think it's for the better. It opens other avenues for other teams to focus on their development, rather than making F1 strictly aero based.
The decision was made to save money?
But I think if the teams don't have to spend that much money in one area, they will spend it in another area, because they try to build the fastest car. And because a other team also wants to win it will spend that amount of money they are up to spend.
I might be wrong but in my Opinion the RRA is the only way to cut the spending of the teams
Aaarg!! More of the same. Teams don't want to have performance differentiators, or take risks figuring out new stuff.
The current engine rules/restrictions have made the engines pretty much equal, so not much performance differentiation there. KERS is made equal power by direct rule. Transmissions are inreasingly limited by rule, so no innovation there, not even any single-gear or CVT technology like in some street cars. I don't see F1 having a long-term change of heart about using powertrain as a differentiator. 2014 may be a brief blip before it stabilizes/stagnates again.
Teams will continue to converge on the same aero and mechanical package. The difference today between the fastest car design and the, say, 8th fastest car design is smaller than it was 5 years ago or especially 10 years ago. If all the teams converge on pretty much the same car then that ain't gonna be the difference.
The practical effect of all this conservatism will be to further increase the importance of driver skill and tire management. Tires are spec, and I think teams will also converge in ability to manage tires (although good tire engineers may see more demand for services). That leaves the driver. Teams will either have a mega-quick and stone-reliable driver like Hamilton, Vettel, Raikkonen, or they will almost never win races. Interesting. I like emphasis on driver quality, but I'm not sure F1 understands the implications of moving toward very similar and unchanging cars. F1 has been a true combination of car innovation and driver. How will the new-style F1 be perceived in 10 years?
As a further rambling, I think it's insane to limit performance differentiation between cars but not have a budget cap. It's just a financially-inefficient spec formula. And that's what I have to say about that.
It's kind of a shame. After all of the hubba-ba-loo about the regs, I was looking forward to a real shake up of the driver standings, where drivers were forced to adapted to less downforce. Alonso, Hamilton, Vettel, Button, Webber, and so many others would've really shown their stuff in aero-limited cars.
Oh well.
I was also looking forward to 2014 to see someone other than Vettel ride away on a Newey creation. Looks like the engines will be the only really difference. We'll see how that turns out....
I wonder what would happen to the money and effort spent by top teams on the design of the 2014 cars. I understand when the regs are supposed to change so much, teams would have to start quite early on the design of the cars. So basically the whole budget teams have spent already has gone all in waste.
Although it would be late and some money is already invested in the project, I wouldn't be surprised if they change the engine rules as well, because "el supremo" already said that the new engine "sounds like s**t".
"...and there, very much in flames, is Jacques Laffite's Ligier. That's obviously a turbo blaze, and of course, Laffite will be able to see that conflagration in his mirrors... he is coolly parking the car somewhere safe."Murray Walker, San Marino 1985
