Kiwi_Chris wrote:For the love of god 2009 cant come soon enough, this sort of s*** is ugly as hell on the cars - i blame tyrell for starting F1 on the downward spiral of tacked on ugly as f*** wings in 96..
I completely agree. It's disappointing that the FIA have allowed the situation to go on for so long. It's been apparent from as far back as 2003 that this aerodynamic junk was affecting the already limited overtaking in Formula One. More focus should have been shifted to making the cars rely more on mechanical grip since then. In fact, you could make a good argument to say that the new rules for the 1998 season were the beginning of all of this and should never have been introduced.
I remember after the 1999 Spanish Grand Prix (surprise surprise it's Catalunya forever producing the dull ones) there was a massive uproar on how the 1998 and onwards regulations were making the races less exciting and Autosport did a feature on why the slicks and wider cars were better, and then it went with Max Mosley saying something along the lines of "we don't want to bring back slicks until 2002 at the earliest". What in the hell was Mad Max thinking of?
It is suggested that because the 1997 cars were now slowly starting to break lap records that Nigel Mansell had set 5 years earlier in the FW14B, they were becoming dangerously fast, so the FIA decided on the crappy grooves and slimmer cars to slow the cars down. But it didn't work, the lap records started to crumble again around 2001/2/3/4. Problem is Mad Max was probably too busy sticking his nose in Michelin's affairs amongst other things and proposing that stupid ugly CDG wing.
"And Mansell was lucky not to be taken off by that RIDICULOUS bit of driving by Alliot!!" - James Hunt "AAAAAND into the pitlane..... OHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!" - Murray Walker
Also the reduction in downforce in 2005 led to the majority use of winglets and other aero devices we see now, in trying to peg back the lost downforce. We would have been in the same boat next year but with the banning of winglets im sure they will find another way around the no winglet rules to get more downforce.
Mosley's other argument for the new 1998 regulations was that the levels of overtaking during races would be increased because cornering speeds would be lower and braking distances longer. Mosley would have been correct if car A, which had to brake at 120 meters before a corner and had a cornering speed of 90 mph, was being closely followed by car B, which had to break 90 meters before the same corner and had a cornering speed of 100 mph! The regulations affected all of the cars, so everybody would be braking earlier and cornering slower!
bud wrote:Also the reduction in downforce in 2005 led to the majority use of winglets and other aero devices we see now, in trying to peg back the lost downforce. We would have been in the same boat next year but with the banning of winglets im sure they will find another way around the no winglet rules to get more downforce.
I reckon the sidepod re-profiling we've seen since the 2003 Ferrari needs to be banned as well. The whole idea of next year's regulations is to make the cars punch a bigger hole in the air and create a bigger slipstream, and if the sidepods were returned to 2002 configuration without the reprofiling, that would help to create a bigger hole in the air too.
"And Mansell was lucky not to be taken off by that RIDICULOUS bit of driving by Alliot!!" - James Hunt "AAAAAND into the pitlane..... OHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!" - Murray Walker
"And Mansell was lucky not to be taken off by that RIDICULOUS bit of driving by Alliot!!" - James Hunt "AAAAAND into the pitlane..... OHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!" - Murray Walker
I think these are the worst aero additions yet, they just look... wrong... quite literally!
Rising number one of Formula 1, Juan - Juan, one wonders should Juan only win one Formula 1 one year, would Juan have won that one in round one, Juan??
