ride height banned within last 30 minutes

It's banned, just literally within the last half hour they banned it.

The exact reasons are still to emerge, but they have banned it. Dr Mark Gillian said so on TheFlyingLap on SimbsTV. http://smibs.tv/live

 

Hmmmm..... If true, that's ****ed up!

Everything we here in the peanut gallery have heard/read (some even from "reliable sources" ) suggests Lotus got the green light from Charlie over a year back.

I admit I'm not sure how it could not be considered a moveable aid, but suspect Lotus (who aren't the richest team) have spent serious $ moving it forward.

I'm gonna reserve judgement until an announcement appears on Autosport.

Cheers,
Ian

 

Wow...not surprising. Same stuff, different day. If true, this is really going to screw Lotus over bad. How on earth do they continue to get away with stuff like this.

Team: Clever tech development
FIA: It's legal
Team: Build entire car around development
FIA: Just kidding, it's illegal, lol

It's completely ridiculous.

 

Agreed. I want to know their reasoning. If the flexi Red Bull front wing can be 'passively' flexible yet it was clearly designed to be flexible which is not legal, than why would a braking system which 'passively' maintains the ride height of the car by means of a tiny hydraulic be illegal. I believe the rules defining 'active' and 'flexible' to be very clear.

 

Im not shocked. Its going to be expensive(in the era of cost containment) and the moveable aero rule. If true of course. If true it explains the Red Bull slow approach to incorporation.

 

Well, here's how I think it went down. A couple teams noticed Lotus testing this system after the season ended and brought it to the attention of the Fia. Everyone was probably somewhat up in arms thinking it absolutely had to be banned because there is no way it could be legal. Charles reviewed the system and only RECENTLY (Jan 11) was it declared 'legal'. Everyone who didn't have one probably went nuts. Ferrari then piped in and said they had a system in the works and Mercedes in essence had one all along. Makes me wonder who piped in first with the whining regarding the system. Red Bull, Mclaren, Sauber, Williams? Or all of them? Who knows. Someone bit*hed really loud about it though.

 

Chief operations engineer with Williams, Mark Gillan, stated a technical directive is going out this evening to the teams banning the system. Williams was of course the original team running this stuff (but originally developed by Lotus years ago) and I'm wondering if they presented case law showing they already attempted presenting this or something like this as an option in the 90s but were denied. Hmm. need details


I also heard Ferrari first tested their system in a simulator after Korea 2011 saying it greatly improved braking stability.

 

I don't think we know enough about the systems (plural!) to really judge any actions of the FIA. Maybe the one deemed legal by Charlie was some crude prototype that only had a fraction of the possibilities implemented, but already stretched the bounds of the rules. The other teams' systems which maybe fully use the potential of the idea then could be far outside the rules.

I'm not saying it is exactly that way - just one possibility how it could be without the need for the usual conspiracy theories... which then again are too often true!

 

Great post, that would actually be a logical conclusion. I would bet that's right about the reason

 

+1

Same way the FIA reversed the results of the Spa GP:
Team: Are you ok with Hamilton letting Kimi pass again?
FIA Steward: Yes.
Team: Are you really sure it was ok?
FIA Steward: Absolutely positive.

FIA after the race: Just kidding, it was illegal. LOL.

That has become the most widely interpreted rule of the book. It was originally written to prevent flimsy movable wings from falling off under loads in the turns back in the sixties when the wings were brand new and nobody knew anything about aerodynamic loading.

And today they can even ban clever things like the mass damper, which was completely enclosed and not exposed to the air flow.

What does surprise me though is that in this case the FIA is ****ting on a small team which had the chance to reverse the usual hacking order. Would have been cool to see the underdog play first fiddle. But no. Back to the same old, same old.

Vettel and RB will strike again. Rinse and repeat.

 

This will make Kimi's season a bit more challenging. The term "second thoughts" probably just barely cover the emotions he is having about his return.

 

It's a travesty that the FIA is so restrictive in the rules that you have to be realllly clever to come up with something to really get an advantage.

...then if you actually do come up with something that works, it will be banned, unless you are one of the top teams with a lot of pull.

I would have loved to see Lotus winning races. A huge shake up would be perfect for the sport.

 

http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2012/01/21/211/

It says the Fia sent a directive 'aiming' to ban. So this means it's not banned just yet but it most likely will be shortly.

 

It's the FIA's way of saying it's going to be banned so don't waste anymore money on it.

It's a common misconception that if Charlie say's it's legal then it is.

Charlie himself has always said that all he can advise the teams is to whether or not he thinks any idea will be legal based on his interpretation of the rules. He has always stipulated that just because he thinks something is "legal", it does not guarantee that it will be.

Me neither. In the past the FIA successfully argued that the Mass damper was a movable aero device and so as I see it, self adjusting ride height is an even more blatant breach of the rule.
If this system had been declared legal, then Renault would have had a good case to argue that the FIA should never have banned the Mass damper as both systems work on a similar principal albeit for a slightly different purpose. This could have led to a slightly messy situation which the FIA would have found difficult to argue successfully, so based on the interpretation of the Mass Damper, they had no choice but to ban this system.

 

Unconfirmed reports are stating Lotus, Mercedes, and Ferrari all lost .500 and are quite upset regarding this turn of events as all have invested heavily into developing the tech. Although further unconfirmed reports say Mercedes has something else which was not exactly like the Lotus/Ferrari systems anyway. Not very clear. But I have zero doubt Williams, Red Bull, and Mclaren have something to do with this. Oh, the whining.

 

I wouldn't say "successfully". Their argumentation made zero sense, but they make the rules so they just dictated it.

In this case here I would agree that this is in fact somewhat of a movable aero device. But that by itself shouldn't get it banned: DRS is nothing but a movable aero device

The game is played the way the FIA wants it

 

Here's what can be done: Lotus, Ferrari, and Mercedes can take this to a race meeting and have it disqualified on a car. They can then have their national sporting authority take the case to the ICA. It would not be the first time that the ICA would overturn a technical directive by an FiA technical delegate or a scrutinizing decision by a race steward.

Even if the ICA finds the thing illegal Lotus, Ferrari, MB still have the option to lobby the F1commission for 2013 to scrap the §10.2.3 which states, "no changing suspension components while the car is in motion".

The problem with the above rule is the FiA told teams a year ago by means of CHarlie Whiting that everything was 'legal'. Because of that, the contract in the form of rule §10.2.3 is void, or at least it can be argued as such.

We don't even know if the whole thing wasn't just a test balloon by Lotus to start the process of having the rules adjusted. We do know from Mercedes and Ferrari that they very much support such systems. Those manufacturers still have a lot of clout in the commission. Bernie and the FiA could throw their hats into the ring and the thing could be legal within two or three months for 2013.

 

The problem with that approach is, that the teams need to make a strategic decision on how to prepare for the season. One way or the other it is about putting all eggs in one basket.

 

I'm surprised it remained "legal" as long as it did. I thought the FIA would have banned this the second the news broke about Lotus utilizing it.

Mark

 

That's what I meant by "successfully argued".

To this day I still can't fathom how the Mass damper itself was deemed a movable aero device. It had an effect on the aero of the car but if you wanted to be pedantic, the exact same argument could be made about the brake peddle and the throttle peddle.

The initial acceptance of the ride height system was based on the fact that it operated independently on the suspension but the exact same argument could be made about the Mass damper. Whilst it did have an effect on the cars aero, it did it by initially acting on the suspension movement.

It suited the FIA to declare the Mass damper illegal at the time for whatever reason and so it was, and Renault decided not to bother to pursue a case that, as I see it, they had a good chance of winning.

The difference is, the DRS was the FIA's idea and was designed to try to increase the overtaking in F1 to improve "The Show".

The ride height system was not the FIA's idea and was designed to give the user an advantage that may possibly make it harder to overtake by giving the user an advantage under braking for corners and thus not allowing cars without the system from getting close enough after a corner to overtake.

As you say:

 

Once again in the land of the blind the one eyed man gets poked in the eye.
If it had to come down I guess the earlier the better but what does it say about any sport when a key man is your litigator?

 

+ a million

True, but that's how motorsports are run these days: totally overregulated

Not just F1, any motorsport.

 

Indeed.
I wasn't limiting myself to F1. Are there any sports (other than You Tube nut shots ) that aren't over nannyed?

 

And here we go; http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/97127

I stand by my initial point and it sure seems like one or more of the heavy hitters must have done some whining......

If I were Lotus I'd be major league pissed off.

Cheers,
Ian

 

from the above autosport article:

"Rival teams are likely, however, to have made an effort to prove to the FIA that the Lotus system was in contravention of the regulations."


Yet just a day or so before Horner is stating the system doesn't matter much, but that's a load if I've ever heard one. I believe that was Horner's way of saying, "it doesn't matter much because our attorneys are making sure it's banned anyway".