Montezemolo was riding on a high during the Schumacher years, and wouldn't give his advantage away. Strange that Ferrari refused a gentlemans agreement to limit resting in 2006, only to accept it only a few years later. This could be due to the change of leadership at Maranello. In any case, the right of veto wasn't invoked to block it. One can assume that Ferrari agreed with the testing limits: "The one who doesn't object consents".
No, and there relies the grey zone. Ferrari, for instance, tested its first hybrid F1 V6 in a prototype similar to a LaFerrari.
Running 5 motors on dynos 24/7/365 costs more than running 1 test car on test tracks 8 hours a day 5 days a week. Back in the V10 era, this was what was necessary to add 10% HP per year while improving motor life every year. BMWs V10 lost 30% of its weight and went from 650 HP to 1000 HP over 4 years while becoming 4× more reliable. Before transmissions had to run more than one race, their internals were changed every practice session ($40K in parts) Before motors had to run more than one race, motors were switched between practice sessions ($30K rebuilds CosWorth) Tires $1000 each Fuel even at $20 per gallon of whatever their <ahem> petroleum supplier mixes together, is an insignificant cost. They made tire simulators ($10M+), They made aerodynamic simulators called wind tunnels with 9,000 motors pushing air ($50M+) They made suspension simulators to stress suspension parts (10M+) ..... These simulators cost more than putting a real race car on a real race track--given that you are not replacing motors and transmission internals every day. As noted above, none of the "cost savings" measures introduced by F1 or FIA has ever lead to any actual cost savings. All that they have done is to make it harder and harder to actually track where the money is........
Absolutely. And their biggest joke of all was the hybrid engine "for cost reasons". Development cost to date is over 1.5 billion. In-****ing-sanity. Development cost of the V8 was 100m for Mercedes/Ferrari/Renault, Cosworth around 20 million. Engine cost per season ~4-6 Million. Pretty big step up....
Where do you get any of your figures from? No offense, but pretty much all of it seems off or made up. dyno time costing more than testing time? I disagree. Either way, when the teams had unlimited testing, the teams still had the engine department running flat out. I don't think that has changed. 10% increase in horsepower per year? A dream come true if teams were getting 70-90 hp per year. Unfortunately that's far from reality, since they didn't jump from 625 hp to 950 hp between 2000 and 2004. When BMW joined with Williams in 2000 they already had a stout engine. If they had only 650 hp, they wouldn't even be able to compete. 1000 hp in 2003? Not quite. There were a few rumors that suggested the best V10s were pretty close to 1000 by the end of 2005, but a lot of folks suggest well under that, closer to 950. 4x more reliable? Well not really either. Just because the rules allowed an engine to only survive 300 km (1 race), doesn't mean it couldn't do a lot more. But I understand what you're saying, since the rules did state engines went from having to last 1 race (2003) to having to last 2 full race weekends (2005). As late as 2003, teams would run a separate engine for practice, qual, and race. Not even then did I hear about teams swapping out transmission internals every single session. Where does the $40k in parts come from? Any F1 team would certainly save time but just swapping a new transmission that has been dyno tested rather than doing rebuilds in the garage. Who knows what actual costs on a transmission was or is, but I'm sure it was a fair bit more than $40k. $30k to rebuild an F1 engine seems like a bargain and perhaps unbelievable. Bud Moeller owns (or owned) an F2003-GA part of Ferrari's F1 Clienti program. He said his engine and transmission gets rebuilt every 1500 km or so, which is longer than the race team would because they run the engines about 700 rpm lower. Cost to rebuild the engine is around $400-500,000. Transmission rebuild is about $100,000. These figures are quite a bit different from the ones you said. $1000 per tire. Fact or guess? Considering there are road tires that cost nearly that much, I'm not sure. Fuel being an insignificant cost? Compared to labor or their overall budget, then yeah probably. But it all adds up. In 6 days of 2022 testing, Ferrari covered something like 3940 km (on track with 1 car). Back in the V10 days, a team would use about 225 liters of fuel per 300 km race. That'd be about 3000 liters of fuel? Don't forget they have to fuel all the semi trucks and generators to transport and operate a test session. With teams like Ferrari and Mercedes, fuel and oil is probably covered by their sponsors. A team like Alfa Romeo, maybe not. The point is to reduce cost, to whoever it is that picks up the bill I guess. Tire simulator, Wind Tunnel, Suspension dyno, again where do you get these figures? I've read that Ferrari's wind tunnel was $10 million. I've seen figures higher and lower before. What 9000 motors? The wind tunnels don't have 9000 fans. I don't know if you were trying to point out flaws in what I said, or just making a point of information. I just find the information and figures you presented are quite a bit different from the information I've gathered. We definitely both agree that regardless of what cost saving strategies F1 tries to implement, it doesn't make a difference as teams will always spend the money they have. Things like R&D of new tech or new formulas almost always cost more than refining or evolving an existing model. But again, it doesn't make a difference. If a team has $100 million to spend on engine and drivetrain, regardless if it's a 5 year old V8 package, or a brand new turbo hybrid PU, they will spend that money, or allocate it to a different department. This is why I like the budget cap. If it's even possible to track, which is very questionable.
Hum, 500k to rebuild an engine? A bit of an exaggeration, no? I saw some numbers from the BOSSGP, can't remember now, but I reckon they were pretty reasonable.
I didn't make the number up, just quoted what the guy claims. To be very clear, this is part of the Clienti program which it would not surprise me in the least if Ferrari was ripping the owners of the classic F1 cars off as part of a business model. So replacement engines, transmissions, wings, etc are not going to share the same costs to Ferrari as they would to the F1 team during the season. The guy said that one of the Clienti cars had a small wreck, and it cost the owner $700,000 to repair it. I think I heard figures float around 1 million pounds when Bottas and Verstappen had their cars destroyed last season.
Grosjean's car(HAAS) was "destroyed" when a flood gate lid on the track popped up on a corner from a previous car and HAAS billed the circuit $750k......the circuit payed for it after some time.
His car was completely destroyed too. I remember Hamilton asking who paid for that in a drivers meeting with Charlie Whiting. Did it get confirmed that the track did pick up the bill? I would love to know how teams come up with costs during the season. If it was my car, and I blew up the engine, I could tally up the cost of new parts, plus labor for the rebuild, taxes, shipping, fuel costs, etc and get a pretty accurate amount, which doesn't include any kind of downtime cost factors. But if I had my own fully capable facility that built my own parts and I had a crew that was paid salary, and a budget (time and money) for repairs, coming up with a repair or replacement cost could easily be manipulated.
It's very different when a 2021 F1 car is wrecked and when a Corse Clienti is wrecked. Still, I think that Corse Clienti is just milking these rich gentleman drivers. A season at the BOSSGP with F1s from the 2000's cost less than a season in F2, so that's why I thought these values exaggerated. I would rather "compete" a season in a full-fledged championship with Jaguars and Toro Rossos from the 2000's than driving alone in the track with the Corse Clienti.
Not what I said: I said 5 engines on 5 dynos running 24/7/365 costs more than 1 engine in one race car running 8/5/365. No more and no less. This came from a BMW report on the BMW V10 engine in the mid-90s though mid 00s. Could have been from the Wright book or from a magazine article. Gears are all machined from 4140 or 4150, shafts are 4340. Lookup Cassette gear box. All the internals come out as a single unit. This was for a DFV mid 1970s, it cannot be less expensive today. The only number I have for work like that. And yet, had I quoted $½M you would have also complained. another cannot be less than number. 750 gallons at $20 per = $15,000. Compared to engine $1,000,000 Compared to tires <fill in any number you like here> My guess is that food expenses for the test were greater than the cost of gasoline. Milliken and Milliken. 9000 HP drives the air flow through the wind tunnel. [/QUOTE][/QUOTE]
The test ban increased costs rather than reduced costs. Doing everything on simulators is more expensive than putting an actual race car on an actual race track: and you get better information from a real race car on a real race track, that from a simulated race car on a simulated track. Also note: Ferrari got lost in simulations and in aerodynamic development because the simulations and the ½ scale models in the wind tunnel lead them astray.
I completely disagree. Aside from thinking it's more expensive to drive in the simulator than to actually test the cars, the teams didn't replace unlimited testing with CFD and wind tunnels, they simply cut down actual testing. Even when teams were allowed to test freely, the CFD and wind tunnels were operating all day long. Teams just ended up putting more resources into those (and other) departments once they limited testing. I agree on track testing gives the most accurate results, but you would never come close to developing an F1 car at the rate they do today without the huge CFD, wind tunnel, and simulator resources they have today. It would be impossible to build and test the thousands and thousands of ideas on track.
Sim rigs, and CFD - are usually about 3/10ths to reality... the on site testing is more for cracks, leaks, and stress - even then they put the cars on axis sims and torture them. when you go to the Scuderia building in Maranello - they have the cars all torn apart, - the wiring and piping are pegged to a large board that is used to test its strength, and connectivity... is really NASA stuff... when I was there last 3-4 years ago, Vettel had just won in GB, and the cars were back being torn apart - literally the whole car is put onto rigs to check rigidity etc... - point being that finite element analysis along with CFD, and auto cad produce cars that are extremely close to real world performance targets... the problems come from initial base lines that were wrong. if the computer has it wrong - the real thing will be wrong and the tests will validate the errors. there is not much left to guess. Real world testing is more for endurance - and temperatures, cracks, and fit. ... and how the driver interacts with the car - knees, elbows etc... I'm not sure if they have sims yet that can replicate the physical stress in the cars ... but sure its coming.
