O.K. after some thinking time I have come up with an early draft proposal for homologating wheel nuts, I would imagine this could be applied to most parts of the car that would be suitable for homologation i.e. brake lines, pedal boxes etc but I shall not digress from the nut:
Max, get your pen and paper ready...
1. All current wheel nut designs are brought before a panel representative of all current teams including the people that design, make, pay for and fit the items in question. A winning design is chosen, incorporating features from other designs if necessary.
2. The specs of the nut are made openly available on the FIA website, the expected demand will be divulged and a yearly tender based on an 'off the shelf' price is invited from anyone interested in producing them. the winning tender gets exclusivity for 1 year.
3. The specs will remain the same and the tender process repeated each year until such time as any company in a position to compete for the tender can can offer an upgraded nut which will improve either safety or performance by at least 10% i.e. speed of removal and refitting, yield strength etc. This clear advantage would be to prevent incremental design changes every single year from keeping the prices high but offers the opportunity of continuing the development of materials and manufacturing via F1.
4. Should point 3 occur the new nut will be homologated alongside the old one for 1 year, the newer nut carrying a maximum of 10% premium on the price for the winning tender of the older spec. nut.
5. Should the nut from points 3 & 4 be successfully employed by the majority of teams the company producing it will be offered the exclusive tender for the following year at the same price as the previous year, including the 10% premium (costing adjustment may be allowed for inflation and severe materials cost changes) but the full details of the design will be made publicly available.
6. Following the year of exclusivity the nut contract will revert to open tender. This will give the incumbent an advantage but still allow competition for the work and encourage innovation within a strictly controlled cost structure i.e. it can be better but it shouldn't put the price through the roof.
It gets a bit messy around points 4 & 5 I'm not quite sure how that would pan out, but I'm reasonably happy with the rest of it and as I said it's an early draft. What does everyone think of that?