2022 Aerodynamic Regulations Thread

[Just_a_fan]

Just define the maximum box, set a minimum team investment, and run whatever you like, but you must upload the parts to a shared cloud for other teams to ponder.

No spending war, no secret tech (can put in road cars), no cheating possible.

It would unemploy a vast number of FOM personnel, but dat close, sustainable racing..

Why would a team spend time and effort developing an idea just to immediately hand it over to their competitors?

No one would bother with that. You may as well just have a spec series.

[Zynerji]

Just define the maximum box, set a minimum team investment, and run whatever you like, but you must upload the parts to a shared cloud for other teams to ponder.

No spending war, no secret tech (can put in road cars), no cheating possible.

It would unemploy a vast number of FOM personnel, but dat close, sustainable racing..

Why would a team spend time and effort developing an idea just to immediately hand it over to their competitors?

No one would bother with that. You may as well just have a spec series.

It's currently headed towards an actual spec series tho.

This method would give teams incentive to innovate designs as they would get the benefit of the first race or 3 with new parts as others would need time to copy.

What you wouldn't end up with is the 3 tier championship that we've had for the last 25 years...

[Just_a_fan]

Just define the maximum box, set a minimum team investment, and run whatever you like, but you must upload the parts to a shared cloud for other teams to ponder.

No spending war, no secret tech (can put in road cars), no cheating possible.

It would unemploy a vast number of FOM personnel, but dat close, sustainable racing..

Why would a team spend time and effort developing an idea just to immediately hand it over to their competitors?

No one would bother with that. You may as well just have a spec series.

It's currently headed towards an actual spec series tho.

This method would give teams incentive to innovate designs as they would get the benefit of the first race or 3 with new parts as others would need time to copy.

What you wouldn't end up with is the 3 tier championship that we've had for the last 25 years...

I can see where you're coming from with it. I guess there would need to be a "patent period" where the originating team gets the sole benefit of the concept before any other team could run it on their cars. Some teams are able to turn things around very quickly, so giving the originating team a fixed number of exclusive-use races would help to keep interest in developing new things.

One side effect would be less interest from mainstream manufacturers. This might include Ferrari. Anything that could be applicable to a road car would be IP they wouldn't want to divulge, for obvious reasons. I'm not a fan of the idea of F1 cars being road relevant so that wouldn't necessarily be a blocker for me.

Isn't it just a variety of the old customer teams concept? I'd be happy to see teams being able to buy from others. It would lead to bigger grids - 20 cars is ok, but 30 would make for some more interesting racing in places. I don't see why someone shouldn't be able to buy last year's Mercedes , Red Bull, Ferrari, etc., and run it.

[jjn9128]

I think open scrutineering is a better compromise. Allows competitors too see what’s going on without just giving the data away. Teams have to actually design bits themselves then.

[hUirEYExbN]

I think open scrutineering is a better compromise. Allows competitors too see what’s going on without just giving the data away. Teams have to actually design bits themselves then.

This is a reasonable idea. Maybe a single representative from each team at scrutineering or something along those lines?

Or, 2 year delay before the designs need to be made public to other teams?

I think this is off topic though. Is there a suitable topic?

[Zynerji]

Why would a team spend time and effort developing an idea just to immediately hand it over to their competitors?

No one would bother with that. You may as well just have a spec series.

It's currently headed towards an actual spec series tho.

This method would give teams incentive to innovate designs as they would get the benefit of the first race or 3 with new parts as others would need time to copy.

What you wouldn't end up with is the 3 tier championship that we've had for the last 25 years...

I can see where you're coming from with it. I guess there would need to be a "patent period" where the originating team gets the sole benefit of the concept before any other team could run it on their cars. Some teams are able to turn things around very quickly, so giving the originating team a fixed number of exclusive-use races would help to keep interest in developing new things.

One side effect would be less interest from mainstream manufacturers. This might include Ferrari. Anything that could be applicable to a road car would be IP they wouldn't want to divulge, for obvious reasons. I'm not a fan of the idea of F1 cars being road relevant so that wouldn't necessarily be a blocker for me.

Isn't it just a variety of the old customer teams concept? I'd be happy to see teams being able to buy from others. It would lead to bigger grids - 20 cars is ok, but 30 would make for some more interesting racing in places. I don't see why someone shouldn't be able to buy last year's Mercedes , Red Bull, Ferrari, etc., and run it.

I would expect it would drive MORE interest by manufacturers, as with 10 teams each spending 50M/yr on R&D means each team gets access to 500M/yr worth of data that can be immediately adapted to road cars (mostly hybrid tech).

The future is co-op. We see it with RBR/AT, Merc/AR, VAG, Nissan/Renault etc already...

[Zynerji]

I think open scrutineering is a better compromise. Allows competitors too see what’s going on without just giving the data away. Teams have to actually design bits themselves then.

Still paying to reverse-engineer tho.

If all teams shut down their entire reverse-engineering part of their team (due to data sharing), they would each save millions.

[PhillipM]

I think open scrutineering is a better compromise. Allows competitors too see what’s going on without just giving the data away. Teams have to actually design bits themselves then.

There's almost nothing goes on at scrutineering the teams can't see anyway, they don't really strip anything apart from some random checks at the ends of races. Most scrutineering is the teams self-certifying.

[jjn9128]

First sight of wheel covers in the wild... can't say I'm impressed.

[jjn9128]

I think open scrutineering is a better compromise. Allows competitors too see what’s going on without just giving the data away. Teams have to actually design bits themselves then.

There's almost nothing goes on at scrutineering the teams can't see anyway, they don't really strip anything apart from some random checks at the ends of races. Most scrutineering is the teams self-certifying.

Could go with a format change to a 2 day weekend with Friday becoming a fan day with open scrutineering - fans can get close to the cars. See all the interesting stuff which is normally hidden under carbon. But we're so far off topic now

[Holm86]

First sight of wheel covers in the wild... can't say I'm impressed.

I really don't get it. Their argument for going to 18" wheels was to look more modern. And then they ruin the look by using covers.

[jjn9128]

I really don't get it. Their argument for going to 18" wheels was to look more modern. And then they ruin the look by using covers.

The 18" is coming for a multitude of reasons. Lower profile = less aerodynamic movement = easier to simulate. Tyre suppliers want it to look more like their road product (I can only imagine for very stupid people, the sort who took up smoking because F1 cars were sponsored by tobacco companies).

The covers are to block the brake cooling flow - keeping the wake narrow. I imagine they might look better painted... but still.

[Holm86]

I really don't get it. Their argument for going to 18" wheels was to look more modern. And then they ruin the look by using covers.

The 18" is coming for a multitude of reasons. Lower profile = less aerodynamic movement = easier to simulate. Tyre suppliers want it to look more like their road product (I can only imagine for very stupid people, the sort who took up smoking because F1 cars were sponsored by tobacco companies).

The covers are to block the brake cooling flow - keeping the wake narrow. I imagine they might look better painted... but still.

Yeah I know, it was more their argumentation I don't get.
Because officially they only said it was because of looks.

I hope they look better painted too, because this looks like a toy wheel ...

[i70q7m7ghw]

It's also about tooling, there's no other series is using the same size tyres as F1 currently, so it's very expensive for tyre manufacturers to run a production line for just a single racing series. In theory, moving towards the larger and more common wheel size opens the door for the tyres to be used across multiple different series. It then becomes a lot more cost effective for the tyre manufacturer as they can sell the tyres beyond the 10x teams in F1.

[Hoffman900]

It's also about tooling, there's no other series is using the same size tyres as F1 currently, so it's very expensive for tyre manufacturers to run a production line for just a single racing series. In theory, moving towards the larger and more common wheel size opens the door for the tyres to be used across multiple different series. It then becomes a lot more cost effective for the tyre manufacturer as they can sell the tyres beyond the 10x teams in F1.

I’d have a hard time believing that the tooling for the F1 cars would ever be used for other series.

Plenty of tire manufacturers make less volume than the F1 tires.