Formula 1’s managing director for motorsport Ross Brawn says its new aero handicap regulations are a way of ‘gently’ levelling the performance of F1 teams without resorting to gimmicks like success ballast.
The new rules will allow teams to do more aerodynamic development if they achieve a lower position in the constructors’ championship. Brawn compared the regulations to the NFL draft, where the last-placed team gets first choice of new players for the following season.Speaking to RaceFans in an exclusive interview, Brawn confirmed the rules are a permanent change to the regulations, not a short-term measure intended to correct the wide disparity in team performance which has developed in recent years.
“This is going to be a permanent feature unless we find some unintended consequence which we don’t know of at the moment,” said Brawn. “It’s a gentle levelling of the playing field.
“The important thing about it is it still is a strong meritocracy. If you do a bad job, even if you’ve got more aerodynamic capacity, you’re going to be at the back of the grid. And if you do a great job with less than aerodynamic capacity, you’re going to be at the front of the grid.
“I like to think of it a bit like the NFL draft pick where you get to pick the best players initially, but you still have to coach them properly and you still to have the right tactics and you still have to be fit and you have to do all those other things that makes it a meritocracy. So this is just a general levelling of the playing field.”
Brawn says F1 intends to avoid more overt forms of performance-balancing seen in other motorsports, such as success ballast, because fans would disapprove of it.
“We’re distinctly avoiding those,” he said. “We don’t like them and what’s come across in many of the discussions we have with the fans is they don’t like it either. If you win a race and then you have to carry 10 kilos extra at the next race, that’s not what Formula 1’s is about.
“I think you can draw a line between those things [and the aero handicap]. What we’re basically saying to the teams that aren’t doing so well is ‘here’s a great opportunity for you – if you don’t take it, that’s your problem’.
“But we’re not going to penalise the top teams by taking away power or adding weight. That will never happen.”
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F1oSaurus (@)
8th June 2020, 7:28
Is it really that different from success ballast though? In the end, less development time simply equates to slower cars.
The only reason the teams swallowed this aero handicap malarkey is because otherwise Brawn threatened to push through the even more nonsensical reverse grid.
Why all the knee jerk reactions anyway? Like lowering the budget cap even further (it’s not a spending cap!) even before the agreed one was ever implemented. Plus the aero handicap even before the budget cap was give the chance to show it would bring the car performance closer.
BasCB (@bascb)
8th June 2020, 7:43
It never demands “less development” though @f1osaurus – all teams are in the end limited by the budget cap for overall spend.
It just means that those who got the better package to build on from the previous season – a big advantage, since normally that means they do not need to “catch up” and can just add onto that already best of class car – cannot put as many resources into further development of the car to stay ahead.
I still trust the better teams to be the ones to more effectively choose what to put those resources towards, so that they will still be at the front in the battle for having the “fastest” cars. Just look at how often a Mercedes development step did not work/backfired and how RB sometimes struggled to make the right update, or indeed how Ferrari had to go back on their steps several times in the last few years.
This just gives a bit of a leg up by giving those further to the back more scope to try and catch up.
F1oSaurus (@)
8th June 2020, 10:03
@bascb It does though, they have less time on wind tunnel and CFD.
BasCB (@bascb)
8th June 2020, 11:13
Yes, they are more limited than others are in the time they can use TESTING their developments in windtunnel and CFD @f1osaurus, but that doesn’t take anything from them.
They can still do as much develoment of parts as any other team can under the budget cap. They will just have to be a bit more picky in what they choose to test out in windtunnel and CFD.
The reality of the developmentrace in F1 shows that process of deciding which parts get further investigated and tested is already a key part of the reason why Mercedes, and to an extent Red Bull, and I’d say ForceIndia / Racing Point do a good job. They choose well and end up with useable parts. Others do a worse job, and end up throwing away development resources or even parts that are tested during race weekends more often.
Clearly these other need more testing / CFD already to come out at a worse result now. I see no good grounds to think that the ones who manage this well now will not be able to make best use of the more limited resources in the future (limited both by already existing limits on CFD/Windtunnel as on the stricter limits that are to step in, and the budget cap limiting the money available for the whole process)
F1oSaurus (@)
8th June 2020, 11:44
@bascb potato potatoe
ColdFly (@)
8th June 2020, 12:28
‘tomato tomato’ if you mean both are the same, @f1osaurus.
Unless you refer to Quayle’s spelling of ‘potato’, which is different (and wrong) and would thus prove @bascb‘s point ;)
On the topic though:
As much as I am against ‘handicaps’ in professional sports and thus against the aero development handicap, it is not as bad as ‘success weight’ or ‘BoP shenanigans’. The team with less aero development time can at least invest those funds in other areas to find some speed (e.g. lightweight materials, engine mapping, stuff like DAS, etc.).
BasCB (@bascb)
8th June 2020, 13:25
;-) @coldfly
As you say, this is indeed a way of putting further restrictions on those that do the best job, with the aim of levelling the playing field. But they went for a relatively decent way that still allows the team to use their recources in a smart way to stay ahead by finding clever things in either by more effective use of their limited aero simulation time, or in other fields that bring better performance.
F1oSaurus (@)
8th June 2020, 15:48
@coldfly @bascb.
Same thing can be done with potatoes: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Po-tay-to%20po-tah-to
Either way, you can pretend it’s different on some meta level, but it has exactly the same effect. It’s a handicap to make the winners go slower.
One team can do 26 simulation runs per week and another gets to do 46 runs per week. In reality that is exactly the same as adding ballast for the winners.
I’m pretty sure they can even estimate how much lap time this costs. Just like with ballast weights.
And “finding clever things” any team can do. Also the ones with more than 26 runs per week.
Don’t even pretend that you don’t understand that this is the same thing. You’d just be humiliating yourself.
The only reason this nonsense made it through is the Ecclestone style blackmail of reverse grids. It’s pathetic that this kind of nonsense gets pushed down their (and our) throats.
BasCB (@bascb)
8th June 2020, 16:20
I am sure you know that is nonsense @f1osaurus – it does not make them slower. It puts tighter limits on how easily they can get even faster. But since they were faster already, and can build on that, they will likely still be at an advantage. It will just be harder to keep that advantage.
What you say about other teams ALSO being able to find clever things – yeah, sure all teams can do so. That is my point. But all of them are still limited by the cost cap for the total amount of work they can do / have done.
So if the top team can use less CFD and windtunnel testing, they will have more money left for other development than the team at the back that gets to spen double the CFD time/windtunnel time (in reality that team can still spend far less, since they will probably operate well below the limit of the budget cap, for lack of funds).
ColdFly (@)
8th June 2020, 16:45
@f1osaurus, https://www.urbandictionary.com/ ?
As you refer to “humiliating yourself”, don’t let Drake and Ariana Grande find out :P
anon
8th June 2020, 18:01
@bascb well, I suppose that you could sort of take a middle line in the question of whether or not it is analogous to measures such as success ballast.
On the one hand, it is true that those teams could then divert those resources into other areas of research, and that in principle it should provide some benefits to those teams that are more efficient than their rivals.
However, on the other hand, aerodynamics is one of the most effective areas to spend money on – figures like Willem Toet have argued that, when you compare the relative performance increase you can get from aerodynamics to the relative performance increase in other areas, aerodynamics is often a more effective means of increasing performance.
In that sense, pushing teams to have to spend money on areas of development that are less efficient at improving performance could be said to have some effects akin to success ballast as, even though some of those effects might be offset through efficiency measures and other means, ultimately it does push teams towards a situation where they are likely to see their performance being diminished over the season by those restrictions on aerodynamic development.
F1oSaurus (@)
8th June 2020, 19:33
@bascb “I am sure you know that is nonsense @f1osaurus – it does not make them slower. I”
Are you kidding me? Development goes through iterations. If they get 5% less iterations they lose 5% of the gains they would otehrwise have made. So if they gain 1 second over a full season they would gain only 0.7s over that same season.
What make believe world do you live in that you think you can simply overcome lack of windotunnel or CFD access?
F1oSaurus (@)
8th June 2020, 19:34
@coldfly You were humiliated yes. Deal with it.
John Ballantyne
8th June 2020, 10:46
Aero access can’t be called a handicap, is an enticement for development, which is what F1 IS all about.
Yaru (@yaru)
8th June 2020, 15:37
In that case give all teams equal access to zeros then. So they can all have more development – what F1 is all about like you said.
Aero access isn’t a handicap, the less access to aero is.
Robbie (@robbie)
8th June 2020, 17:32
@bascb Agree with your stance.
@f1osaurus Can you provide the quotes from Brawn where he ‘threatens’ to ‘push through’ reverse grids?
F1oSaurus (@)
8th June 2020, 19:30
@robbie Once gain you show yourself utterly not up-to-date. Wolff said it. Ask him for his he quoted
Biskit Boy (@sean-p-newmanlive-co-uk)
8th June 2020, 8:01
Except in 2022 of course, when the previous season’s package won’t mean much. The ‘sliding scale’ might have a bigger impact.
However by then, if the new 2022 rules have the desired effect and the budget cap is biting, the sliding scale aero testing rules might not be needed.
jet
8th June 2020, 8:21
Get rid of the wings. Problem solved.
John H (@john-h)
8th June 2020, 8:26
Indeed.
Biskit Boy (@sean-p-newmanlive-co-uk)
8th June 2020, 8:26
+1
It would be amazing to watch. Running so close, sliding around. Bring it on. We’d soon get used to the look.
Look at This!!!
NewVerstappenFan (@jureo)
8th June 2020, 9:49
Imagine, that no wings.
Rhys Lloyd (@justrhysism)
8th June 2020, 11:11
They would be so slow.
Biskit Boy (@sean-p-newmanlive-co-uk)
8th June 2020, 12:32
Correct, but why is that a problem?
With ground effect, bigger tyres and more power, they wouldn’t be that much slower, but boy would they be awesome to watch. The Lotus 80 in its original trim wasn’t that much slower than its contemporaries.
anon
8th June 2020, 18:33
@sean-p-newmanlive-co-uk the Lotus 80 really was a failure for the team – the theoretical performance of the car could never be utilised in reality, and it is notable that the developments that the car received, before Lotus eventually abandoned the idea as unworkable, were mainly about moving the car further and further away from the original concept that Chapman had.
Basically, the idea really only worked in the idealised conditions of a wind tunnel, where issues with pitching and yawing didn’t occur – as soon as you introduced those aspects, the handling rapidly worsened.
It’s notable that barely anybody else tried Chapman’s idea – only the Arrows A2 was similar, and that was also notorious for having the same problem of dangerously erratic high speed handling problems (most of the times the Lotus 80 was used, it was mainly at slower speed circuits where the handling faults of the car were less obvious). Like the Lotus 80, which was initially discontinued in favour of the older 79 and eventually replaced by the Lotus 81, the Arrows A2 was also followed by a car that was far more conventional in its conception than the A2 was.
Biskit Boy (@sean-p-newmanlive-co-uk)
9th June 2020, 7:39
Correct. All us F1 nuts know the history of this car. When judged against its contemporaries, it was ultimately a failure. I was only using it as example of how a car might look with no wings.
If we had a grid of these cars and the ground effect was removed or managed to give more benign handling characteristics, which I think is now possible, then it would be a good way forward.
anon
10th June 2020, 22:28
@sean-p-newmanlive-co-uk although some teams would sometimes run without a front wing, ultimately most teams from that era found that they did still need to use wings in order to adjust the handling balance of the cars and to offset some of the problems with shifts in handling balance as the car pitched and yawed.
In reality, I suspect that you probably will not be able to achieve your ambition of having no wings – most of the attempts that were made to try and eliminate wings and to rely that heavily on sculpted underbodies to generate all downforce tended to run into problems when trying to deal with the inherent roughness of tracks, problems with variations in the centre of pressure with pitch and yaw and flow instability that could cause part or all of the floor to stall.
Yaru (@yaru)
8th June 2020, 15:37
Agreed. If aero is causing problems then get rid of it.
SadF1fan
8th June 2020, 9:13
You can name the beast anything you want, it doesn’t change it’s nature. The aerohandicap is nothing more than punishing merit, and is no different than punitive ballast or BOP. No matter how you sugarcoat it, it just doesn’t change its nature.
The results of the past dont back that statement. The last 20 years of F1, every single rule to make the sport cheaper, has led the sport to be more expensive, more reliant on massive manufacturers and with more disparity.
Rhys Lloyd (@justrhysism)
8th June 2020, 11:18
That doesn’t make any sense in relation to the quote you referenced. At all. There’s no mention of anything to do with cost.
DB-C90 (@dbradock)
8th June 2020, 11:22
I’m a little concerned by all this.
First a budget cap was agreed – something I think we all agreed was well overdue.
Then all of a sudden, it gets reduced and in addition this handicap (yes Ross it is a handicap system) is introduced to assist in getting the backmarkers further forward and to handicap the top teams development efforts.
I had the impression that the aero regulations had been added to temporarily try to get more balance, albeit artificially, in the short term. I’d actually thought I’d seen that referenced somewhere (that it was a temporary measure) but maybe I just misinterpreted the rules.
What bothers me though is that what seemed to be a solid plan to limit budgets, change the technical regulations to reduce dirty air and converge team’s performance is now turning into a bit of a “let’s throw in a whole heap of things and something hopefully will work” routine.
Surely we can at least measure the effect of the 2022 changes and 2021 budget cap before we need to throw up yet more regulations. What to me seemed like a sensible path now seems to be becoming a panic path when there’s no need for it.
RL
8th June 2020, 11:40
Is the handicap a sliding scale?
For those uninitiated to American sports drafts, one of its “darker” elements is the spectre of tanking, where teams deliberately put out horrible line-ups with the intention of getting the best draft pick available.
I wouldn’t say it’ll be a like-for-like comparison but given Brawn’s analogy, I wonder if the same thing will transfer as well to F1.
black (@black)
8th June 2020, 12:32
In F1 Ferrari, Mercedes and Red Bull spend 3-4 times the amount a backmaker spends… sure this will change after F1 introduces their ‘cost cap’ but the top teams will still have better equipment, more skilled people and can spend more to lure better drivers than the last teams, so there will be still a difference in the economic size of a team even after ‘cost cap’ is introduced no matter what.
Now correct me if i’m wrong but the American teams in NBA, NFL, etc operate more or less on the same budget enforced by their ‘salary cap’, each one has perfect facilities, highly skilled people that operate the team & marketing, etc… A team can deliberatly perform poorly in order to finish last and pick first next year. But if that made any significant difference, then the team that finished last in 2018 for example, would dominate or would at least perform much much better in 2019. Instead we end up with pretty much the same finalists every season, because picking the first draft a young but inexperienced player won’t make much of a difference when the rest of your team is mediocre and the champions have the best of the best.
If Williams spends 64% more time than Mercedes developing their car, they wouldn’t end up with a car that will lap 2sec faster than Mercedes’s would. 32%, half of that 64%, would probably be spent catching up with the rest of the midfield and the other half 32% would account for what Mercedes could develop with their 1% from their better facilities and knowledge.
Aleš Norský (@gpfacts)
8th June 2020, 12:54
Maybe he is right. Yet, combined with DRS and reverse grid qualifying races (let’s face it, it’s just a matter of time) it is another step in a direction from which there would be no return and that could only bring even more artificial solutions as time goes by. Equitable distribution of funds ought to be enough to promote and maintain more level competition.
Yaru (@yaru)
8th June 2020, 15:42
Just use the cost cap and let teams use that money within the rules of the cap however they want. No need to artificially limit zeros just to artificially change team places every season. Yes it makes thing less predictable but feels like giving unfair advantage to underperformance just for the sake of it and incentivisez team to underperformance.
F1oSaurus (@)
8th June 2020, 15:51
@gpfacts Well as Wolff put it, they accepted this aero handicap “disgustingness” because the alternative would be reversed grids.
Apparently they are so desperate for “show” and to let lesser teams/drivers also win a championship that they need to put the handbrakes (airbrakes) on them.
Robbie (@robbie)
8th June 2020, 17:46
@f1osaurus And once again you are taking license with quotes and putting words in peoples’ mouths. Just as I have asked you above to show me the quotes of Brawn ‘threatening’ to ‘push through’ reverse grids, show me where Wolff has “accepted this aero handicap ‘disgustingness’ because the alternative would be reverse grids.”
You are twisting what Brawn and Wolff are saying to try to sell your personal opinion and argument. But nice try though. You just haven’t fooled anyone.
F1oSaurus (@)
8th June 2020, 19:39
@robbie I’m not twisting anything. You should just read more than this half-assed blog. Or learn to read really, but that’s not your thing I guess.
Robbie (@robbie)
9th June 2020, 10:56
@f1osaurus I’ll take that as a “no Robbie I am unable to provide the quotes to support my argument as I have twisted what Wolff and Brawn have said to suit my opinion. My childish attempt at distraction by claiming you can’t read is meant as proof that I am right about what Wolff and Brawn have said. I have learned this technique from Trump.”
F1oSaurus (@)
9th June 2020, 21:05
@robbie It just means that i’m tired of you uneducated whining.
Robbie (@robbie)
9th June 2020, 23:11
@f1osaurus No it means you don’t have the quotes. Go ahead and educate me then if you have the quotes.
F1oSaurus (@)
10th June 2020, 7:20
@robbie It just means that i’m tired of you uneducated whining.