Quote:
Originally Posted by Taxi645
In aviation if an airplane is 15% heavier than it needs to be and it's engine 7x more expensive than necessary, any investor would laugh you out the door. in F1 we say it looks good and make excuses why it is a good design.
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That's true if the investor is expecting a commercial return from a company selling aircraft to other companies who in turn plan to use them in a competitive market.
None of those factors is true of F1. The commercial return F1 teams get depends in large part on the appeal of the cars to fans with a wide range of preferences, from the highly technical (you) to the purely aesthetic (me). It's never been purely about building a car with bleeding edge technology.
Personally as well anything that makes the cars harder to drive is good. Driver can't see the apex? Great! I also agree with the observation above that if a WEC or IMSA prototype driver can manage in the dark, in the rain, for three hours at a time, on four hours sleep, in a car not set up for them, with a greasy windshield and while constantly lapping slower cars, then it's not obvious to me why we should give an F1 driver seeing over the big front tyre even the slightest consideration.