F1 Testing 2020: Week 1 Barcelona (19th - 21st)

Caporegime
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It hardly challenges the drivers! It's not like it makes the car hard to drive on the limit or anything. Like I say, it's not relevant to road use and it doesn't make the sport any more enjoyable to watch.

It's an utterly brilliant technical innovation that's made testing far more interesting from a technical stand point, but there's zero benefit to keeping it in the sport long term.

Things like CVT gearboxes had a long term relevance and are used everyday now outside of the sport, so that's an example of a technical innovation which could and maybe should have had a long-term future, but things like fan cars, active suspension, F-ducts or exhaust blown diffusers don't. As brilliant as they were and relatively simple in the F-ducts case, in my opinion it was right that were ultimately banned as they added nothing other than spreading the field out.



I've got magnetorheological semi active suspension on my road car, so why can they not have that on the pinnacle of motor sport ?
 
Soldato
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I've got magnetorheological semi active suspension on my road car, so why can they not have that on the pinnacle of motor sport ?
Sorry, I wasn't aware it was on production cars.

Still, reading about it's not really the same as the active suspension development race of the 80s and 90s which is what I was referring too (and it was 30 years ago).
 

Dup

Dup

Soldato
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All these innovations lead to alienating the budget shy teams which is the current issue of F1. Cost. Which then alienates the fans becasue racing suffers as a result. If the sport continued like that, nobody would want to enter or sponsor.

I think they're right to ban it in the interim, and any other ideas. But it should be encouraged as a proposal to future rules, so teams have a heads up on development. Of course that makes it less fun than a team turning up with say a double defuser and wiping the floor with everyone but ultimately when that excitement dies down we want to see race leaders fighting for the win, not walking it.
 
Man of Honour
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All these innovations lead to alienating the budget shy teams which is the current issue of F1. Cost. Which then alienates the fans becasue racing suffers as a result. If the sport continued like that, nobody would want to enter or sponsor.

Innovation doesn't necessarily have to cost money. Indeed many of the best innovations in F1 history came from the smaller teams. If you are going to ban all innovation or make it available to all teams no one will bother at all.
 
Soldato
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Really not a fan of limiting innovation, I understand the cost implications for smaller teams and the lack of new teams willing go join. But this sort of ban, without even seeing how it performs in race conditions, is just leading to more of the same cars. But to follow that up we are all getting the talk about the pink Mercedes following on from the complaints about Haas. I feel this is the on going start of the end of F1 as we know and love it.
Andi.
 
Caporegime
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It hardly challenges the drivers!

We don't know what the drivers can or can't do with it yet, they've not experimented. But while I agree it's unlikely to help them push the limits it does give them an extra control over the vehicle, that doesn't seem a bad thing.

Like I say, it's not relevant to road use and it doesn't make the sport any more enjoyable to watch.

I'm not sure why "relevant to road use" is a particular cutoff, especially in these days when so much of F1 design is about aerodynamics that is utterly irrelevant to anything except F1. I'd rather teams were spending and innovating with mechanical systems like this than messing around making the mirrors produce fractionally less drag.

Things like CVT gearboxes had a long term relevance and are used everyday now outside of the sport, so that's an example of a technical innovation which could and maybe should have had a long-term future, but things like fan cars, active suspension, F-ducts or exhaust blown diffusers don't. As brilliant as they were and relatively simple in the F-ducts case, in my opinion it was right that were ultimately banned as they added nothing other than spreading the field out.

Many things have been banned which are used outside of F1 (i.e. active suspension or active aero), and while I agree that banning rules-dodges like the F-duct and frighteningly dangerous but clever tricks like the fan cars was right, I think F1 is far too quick to ban technical innovations. In-race dynamic toe angle control is a clever trick that I think it is a shame to ban before we've ever really seen it in action.
 
Soldato
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Could also lead to some entertainment especially in qually to try to get the benefit out of it and then one of the Merc drivers doesn't put it back correctly and goes wide at the next corner etc. could open up the racing if it's a bit closer at the front.
 
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Soldato
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I'm not sure why "relevant to road use" is a particular cutoff, especially in these days when so much of F1 design is about aerodynamics that is utterly irrelevant to anything except F1. I'd rather teams were spending and innovating with mechanical systems like this than messing around making the mirrors produce fractionally less drag.

Trickling down to road use is the big thing in F1. Or at least that's what the top teams claim, especially regarding the power units (which aren't all that relevant the vast majority of cars at the moment).



In-race dynamic toe angle control is a clever trick that I think it is a shame to ban before we've ever really seen it in action.

I do agree that it's a shame to ban it, I'm just saying what I think the reasons for it are, and I think they're valid. Ideally we'd keep things like this, but I just don't think it's really practical to do so.
 
Caporegime
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Trickling down to road use is the big thing in F1. Or at least that's what the top teams claim, especially regarding the power units (which aren't all that relevant the vast majority of cars at the moment).

I realise the teams like to have trickle down to road use; but I think treating it like a cutoff is a bad idea. Especially for minor stuff like this; we're not talking engine development here.
 
Soldato
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Can't believe the news of the banning. I was actually excited to see something new on a car, something we've not seen before.

F1 should be about pushing innovation and engineering near the limits.

What incentive will teams have to develop new stuff? They know they could spend X amount of time & money on something just for it to get banned.
 
Man of Honour
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Ferrari are not looking that good. Effectively the slowest car out there today (the 2 drivers behind Vettel had team mates who went faster). Also 140 laps down on testing total from Mercedes, only Williams and Haas have fewer laps done this week.

They seem to be just hovering around 1:18.5, stuck on some softer tyres and only went a small amount faster.

 
Soldato
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Ferrari are not looking that good. Effectively the slowest car out there today (the 2 drivers behind Vettel had team mates who went faster). Also 140 laps down on testing total from Mercedes, only Williams and Haas have fewer laps done this week.

They seem to be just hovering around 1:18.5, stuck on some softer tyres and only went a small amount faster.
And with some of the midfield teams looking extremely good they are going to have to pull something out of the bag in Melbourne to look halfway decent.

The midfield fight is going to be epic by the looks of things, some really nice performing cars out there.
 
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Man of Honour
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And with some of the midfield teams looking extremely good they are going to have to pull something out of the bag in Melbourne to look halfway decent.

The midfield fight is going to be epic by the looks of things, some really nice performing cars out there.

Yeah, the midfield looks really tight, Pink Mercs, Renault and Alfa's really looking good. Potentially fighting for 3rd overall if Ferrari stay back there.
 
Soldato
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Can't believe the news of the banning. I was actually excited to see something new on a car, something we've not seen before.

F1 should be about pushing innovation and engineering near the limits.

What incentive will teams have to develop new stuff? They know they could spend X amount of time & money on something just for it to get banned.
But it hasn't been banned at all, the system isn't part of the design for cars in 2021 therefore it can't be used and Mercedes are well aware of this. However everyone is jumping the gun as we don't know yet if the system will be of benefit or actually detrimental. Hell mercedes might not even bring it to the first race.
 
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But it hasn't been banned at all, the system isn't part of the design for cars in 2021 therefore it can't be used and Mercedes are well aware of this. However everyone is jumping the gun as we don't know yet if the system will be of benefit or actually detrimental. Hell mercedes might not even bring it to the first race.

Very true, but if they do find a benefit it is a genius move to invent something that no-one else is likely to develop at this late stage due to the lack of relevance for 2021.
 
Soldato
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Very true, but if they do find a benefit it is a genius move to invent something that no-one else is likely to develop at this late stage due to the lack of relevance for 2021.
It looks like it's something that is quite easy to implement, it's not a double defuser, but with the banning next year some will not even try as, by the time they get it on the car, it'll have a very limited life on the car.

It is a shame that the FIA crack down on this sort of innovation, it's something that has been visibly missing from F1 for a while now - the rules are too strict..

I would like them to open up the energy recovery side of the power unit. Add a MGU(Motor Generator Unit) to the front axle and increase the allowed energy recovery, and thus deployment, to unlimited. This way it will push F1 in a useful, for the motor industry, way and would increase performance a good amount - alas it won't happen with the FIA as it is now.
 
Man of Honour
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It looks like it's something that is quite easy to implement, it's not a double defuser, but with the banning next year some will not even try as, by the time they get it on the car, it'll have a very limited life on the car.

Apparently not that easy to implement. Heard anything from 3 to 6 months to implement correctly, also it has to pass a crash test - more expense, potentially a new chassis as well, which will bring even more crash tests then.

On the positive side...

Binotto has admitted they are behind Mercedes and Red Bull at the moment.

https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/...rari-boss-binotto.38KIsNMysAnT8fnrdWR6T6.html
 
Caporegime
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This season might even see more domination from Mercedes

I sure hope Mercedes are near their peak performance and the others (ferrari particularly) are sandbagging !
 
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