I read an interesting article in Europe about the biggest new technical hurdle for next year, that hasn't even been fully defined yet: The movable rear wing As of next year, the teams will have another button in their cockpit to flatten the rear wing for a super fast speedy pass of the car ahead of them. Notice the intention of that button please: It is about making passing easier So far so good. But here is the problem: The wing can't be just flattened whenever the driver feels like it (as on a straight to be faster) but only to aid in passing situations. So how do you define passing? Well, of course when it is for position, but not for lapping cars. Aha! Now what if we have a faster car trying to pass a car ahead while there is also a lapped car? And what does "ahead" mean? 2 meters, 10 meters, 50 meters, 100 meters? And how do you enforce that? And how do you even measure that? GPS in the cars? With a computer to monitor all the movemements of the 20+ cars and their rear wings? Lots of questions but no answers from the FIA yet. Expect the next controversy. PS: Sorry, I have no source. I tossed the magazine after reading. It was motorsport aktuell, my "Bible" for F1.
I thought about this as soon as that dumb rule was revealed. As far as I can tell, there will be someone who gets to make a judgment call concerning when the button can be used. To me, that's rediculous. It's a disaster waiting to happen. Even if they were to find the most neutral person on earth to work the controls, everyone would still claim favortism. It also begs the question whether someone can effectively monitor ever car on track and decide when the button should get used properly. Mark
I have faith in the FIA rule makers. They make mistakes so rarely. There is no doubt that the law of unintended consequences will rear its head and something entirely unexpected will result. There's a fifty/fifty chance that it will be for the better. Right?
To quote Clarkson a few years ago...strip down the car to everything. Eliminate all the science in it. Let the drivers actually drive the car. While lots of people are hoping for a good 2011 season, it might be, but i'm afraid it's gonna be another parade year. Unless of course it rains...
I thought they had a time difference requirement (.7 seconds?) and a physical positioning requirement that the button can be used on the track ie., the straights.
This is a clusterf*ck waiting to happen. I can envision another Spa/Hamilton controversy all over again.... Is there a way to blame this on Max Mosley? Thanks Kevin
The wing can only be activated for a certain period of time, that's true. But how do you decide when it is the right moment? After all this is not about making the cars faster on the straight in general but to allow for easier passing. Hence the requirement of a competing car in front. How do you measure that? Actually I think this will be worse: That situation was once in a race involving two cars. This one here will affect a multitude of cars over the period of a whole race. There will be countless situations that could be debated. Honestly I don't see how this can be resolved. I doubt there is enough smart technology around to police this electronically and definitely not from a human/referee perspective. So it will come down to the drivers and you know exactly what the guy in front will do when he sees the car behind him about to pass him: He'll set his wing to flat as well and thereby nullifies the effect. Which is against the rules, but he'll claim he was about to pass a lapped car in front of him. A well intentioned rule that has even less of a chance to be honestly implemented than the team orders had.
But, I thought when they changed the rules to include these obnoxiously large/movable front wings and tiny rear wings this would stimulate more passing? Now movable rear wings are going to stimulate more passing. And, what sort of passing might we expect to see now? Passes for position 5-6 times per lap? 3-4 lead changes per lap? The more they try to tinker with these rules, the more of a NASCAResque slippery slope they're falling into. We've been told for 40+ years that movable wings are disallowed for safety reasons. Have they figured out how to make movable wings absolutely safe? BHW
I'm not worried about the safety aspect: When they banned movable wings it was after some of those ungodly contraptions from 68/69 collapsed under cornering loads. They didn't have the knowledge about aero loads and manufacturing as they do today. That said, ever since the "movable aero parts" rule has been nothing but a joke: Renault's mass damper, which was not exposed to the windflow at all, but enclosed inside the body was banned because of the rule while superdiffusers and f-ducts were allowed, which clearly play into the whole aero part of the regulations. Maybe the best we can expect from the new rule is that it will no longer ban other movable aero parts and the engineers come up with something completely different that then in turn will not be bannable. As Viszla said, the law of unintentional effects is in full swing with this one.
If Mosley was still in charge, I would be really against it, I hate grey area rules, he loved them to mete out his twisted penalties...We shall see how Todt fairs, up to now he seems ok to me.
And yet you persist. Such pluck This may be where we see what sort of leader Todt is. If and when this needs straightening out it will be quite the test.
I could have sworn that had already been determined. It's some like: The driver of teh car wanting to pass the car in front of them can only activate the wing if they are within .7 seconds of the car in front of them and they can only activate it at certain areas of the track. So this essentially means that had this rule been in effect this year, Alonso could have potentially passed Petrov in Abu Dhabi on the straight as AL was always within that time frame when entering the straights. The question is, can the car BEING passed active the wing as well in an attempt to NOT be passed? I think at the moment, no.
OK, I just looked. It's within 1 second of the driver in front of them and the wing can only be activated at certain areas of the tracks. However, In quali, they can use the wing as much as they like
Ok, now how do you measure that? Will the wing system be tied into the real time feed of the telemetry and only activate if the car is within that second? And is that 1 second for the entire lap or only for the moment of passing? If it is only for the passing attempt, then how does the system know it is within one second? Military spec GPS? Estimation of position? Radar or IR sensors in the car? And if it is only on certain areas, how is that integrated? Real time GPS or sensors in the track? And then there is the confusing element of lapped cars. I would assume the rule applies there as well so that adds more complexity into the whole process. Or does the FIA simply think the drivers will manage it and the stewards will control them? Please don't tell me that's their answer. BTW: The article I read did state that the rule is in place, but it left all these questions of the actual implementation wide open.
So the FIA has come again with another silly rule that will be near impossible to enforce... What's new?
Doesn't it just help a following car pass a car ahead? In other words, I thought that to be effective, it required a car in front punching a hole through the air? I don't see why they don't just let anyone use it anytime they like. That is what will happen anyway.
Indy cars tried something on the Super Speedways many years back and it worked so well it actually became dangerous. I'm sure it would have the same effect on F1 cars on the long straights and would be simple to monitor: http://www.meccaofspeed.com/pages/paddockpass/2008/paddockpass2008/06_19_08hanford.html The Hanford device!
As I remember it resulted in cars swapping places every other lap at the same spot. A bit of a farce that was discontinued.
Read today some more details of the technical implementation of this new rule: The drivers will have a green light installed in their cockpit, which will indicate them when they're within a second of a passing car and within the passing zone. The light will be controlled by race control. So I'm still wondering how race control manages those 26 cockpit lights, particularly in complex situations with multiple cars and lapped cars? And how do they verify/enforce that drivers only used the wing setting while the light was on?
That's the plan? The idiots who run F-1 can't even determine how to properly deploy a pace (sorry - safety) car, so how are they going to monitor all the cars, determine when the time is right, and implement these decisions? Yet another F-1 cluster*#@! Disclosure: believe it or not, I'm a big F-1 fan.
