Quote:
Originally Posted by chillibowl
as it relates to entertainment, yes indeed superior solutions can become negatives.
RB this year would be case and point.
|
A good example of the conflicting goals of F1. We want teams to be creative. We don't want teams to benefit too much from their creativity.
Quote:
Originally Posted by chillibowl
well banning better solutions certainly is at F1's core.  |
Touche!
Quote:
Originally Posted by chillibowl
actually after 5 races, im surprised no one is seemingly even making an effort to say RB is violating the sprit of the rules with their DRS treatment.
|
Yes. My take is that anyone can make any accusation they want. Especially accusations that might result in benefits to themselves!
If you look online, there seems to be no shortage of pundits who spell out exactly how and why RBR is so quick. It seems to be focused around aero efficiency and anti dive suspension geometry. How do you ban those? They are basic concepts. The devil is in the details. It is likely just elegantly implemented. How do you regulate that? If everyone seems to "know how they do it", why hasn't anyone replicated it yet? I expect the answer is "requires full rethink of our aero/chassis concepts". Then do that for next year! It will be painful, but that is how it goes. People want performance parity super quick in these new regulations. It may take a while for that to happen. And each time they make changes to the regulations, there may be surprises in which someone jumps ahead of the others. And it is just as likely that those who are performing well today may do the same tomorrow. That is why it was such a shock that Mercedes failed so badly. But it can (and clearly did) happen.
Quote:
Originally Posted by chillibowl
as the rule makers try to encourage closer racing/a tighter grid, and as Brawn warned, superior and/or clever solutions can be a problem if and when those solutions contribute to increased pressure to spend more/up the budget cap limit.
in that light, i can also appreciate there is a fair amount of irony to all of this as the most expedient solution to preventing RB from continuing to too cleverly working their DRS system might actually be the best argument to just ban DRS and its related systems for everyone?  |
The regulators did say they will try to immediately close unexpected loopholes. I mostly take that as solutions that were not to the spirit of the regulations. Specifically solutions that manage to extend somehow outside of the boxes they put the teams into. I support that approach.
But what happens when a team plays perfectly inside of the box, and just performs better than the others? Even in spec series, you see performance differences.
This has strayed a bit from DRS. But it does remind me of the changes made between last and this season regarding ride height. Frankly it was to dial RBR back a bit as others struggled to get a handle on porpoising. It was a kneejerk reaction. It seems to have not phased RBR and yet others remain somewhat adrift this year as much as last. Maybe people should consider that rule changes that target RBR (or anyone else) might be just as likely to backfire than succeed.
Richard