Did Honda / Brawn GP set a bad precedent?

[keysersoze]

They scrapped development on their '08 program to focus on '09, and because it worked out for them, now we're hearing grumblings from other teams that they may cease development on their '09 car to focus on 2010, most notably McLaren.

Does anyone else find that trend disgusting? It's like a tennis player throwing the last game of a set just so he can begin the next one on serve. Or football / basketball teams throwing in the towel at the end of the season to ensure a better draft position.

[Dzeidzei]

They scrapped development on their '08 program to focus on '09, and because it worked out for them, now we're hearing grumblings from other teams that they may cease development on their '09 car to focus on 2010, most notably McLaren.

Does anyone else find that trend disgusting? It's like a tennis player throwing the last game of a set just so he can begin the next one on serve. Or football / basketball teams throwing in the towel at the end of the season to ensure a better draft position.

And perhaps Ferrari should spend 3 billion or zillion euros developing the 2010 car and only spend 40whatever million next year?

[Knock-on]

I wouldn't say it was "disgusting" at all.

Honda realised that there were fundemental issues with last years car and decided to take the sensible decision which was to start again.

The term "you can't polish a turd" springs to mind.

[markabilly]

bmw, which had a shot at the wdc for kube last year, claimed to do the same, after thet got their one win.......

really did them great, threw away their shot last year, only to ..........this year

[Knock-on]

bmw, which had a shot at the wdc for kube last year, claimed to do the same, after thet got their one win.......

really did them great, threw away their shot last year, only to ..........this year

Good point.

You can imagine them thinking how clever they were at the time :laugh:

[CNR]

I wouldn't say it was "disgusting" at all.

Honda realised that there were fundemental issues with last years car and decided to take the sensible decision which was to start again.

The term "you can't polish a turd" springs to mind.

Actually you can, quiet well actually, their is a Mythbusters-episode about it.

bmw did the same cut the development of last years car
but look at Marco Melandri on his Kawasaki in motogp

[Tazio]

Though not optimum for competition towards the end of the season,
what I would define as disgusting is the FIA propensity to make radical rule changes so often! :down:

[Rollo]

If the ultimate goal of every team is to win races and Championships, and such a tactic doesn't contravene the rules, then why not?

The familiar catch cry of "there's always next year" is often said by the losers, it just so happens that on this occasion that it's paid off. It's an exception not a rule.

[V12]

I think it's great if it means you get a shake up of the grid every year without having to resort to any artificial measures.

[SGWilko]

Good point.

You can imagine them thinking how clever they were at the time :laugh:

I think Mario should go on record - as he did when with Williams - and publicly ridicule the chassis manufacturer for his woes - cos the engine is great.

Oh, no wait, that won't work.........

[Dave B]

They scrapped development on their '08 program to focus on '09, and because it worked out for them, now we're hearing grumblings from other teams that they may cease development on their '09 car to focus on 2010, most notably McLaren.

Does anyone else find that trend disgusting?

No, because Brawn made it work while certain others didn't. It's still a test of skill and car design.

Take BMW Sauber for example: they tried a similar strategy (much to the disdain of Robert Kubica) and it's spectacularly bitten them on the backside. There was potentially a driver's championship up for grabs and they blew it churning out a dog of a car for this year.

As it should be, the cleverer team got an advantage.

The Brawn/Honda situation was an anomoly, it's unlikey you'll ever see a consistently front-running team sacrifice a season in such a manner.

[chuck34]

As has been pointed out, Brawn isn't the only ones to do this. But no one has brought up Bennetton. I'm not sure if Renault has kept this up. When they were Bennetton and won the Champoinships a few years back, they basically had two teams. One working on this year's car, and one working on next years car. So there would be a team working on, say 2009 car now, and one working on the 2010 development. Then when '09 is over the '09 team would start working on the '11 car, and the '10 team would go from development to racing.

Sort of the same thing Brawn and BMW have done.

[wedge]

The beauty of F1 is that teams constantly develop and therefore will have differing development programs and priorities.

Ferrari set a trend of racing the previous year's cars just so they could maximise the potential (ie. reliability) of the new car for that particular year.

McLaren famously tested the MP4-18 to death in 2002/03 and it never raced at a GP in '03 whilst running a parallel program to update the MP4-17 and spec D/MP4-17D to the MP4-19

[Sleeper]

As has been pointed out, Brawn isn't the only ones to do this. But no one has brought up Bennetton. I'm not sure if Renault has kept this up. When they were Bennetton and won the Champoinships a few years back, they basically had two teams. One working on this year's car, and one working on next years car. So there would be a team working on, say 2009 car now, and one working on the 2010 development. Then when '09 is over the '09 team would start working on the '11 car, and the '10 team would go from development to racing.

Sort of the same thing Brawn and BMW have done.
I never knew that Benetton did that, but there was a reason that Renault had two design cheifs earlier this decade (Mark Smith and Rob Bell, Smith is now with Red Bull though) and they would be working on alternate years cars.

As for the main topic, Renault have used the trick of scraping development one season in favour of the next several times before, most succesfully in 04/05 when they stoped working on a race winner that was still a long way off Ferrari in favour of the following car which won the title. It doesnt always work though as last years car still wasnt a contender even though they scrapt 07.

[Sleeper]

The beauty of F1 is that teams constantly develop and therefore will have differing development programs and priorities.

Ferrari set a trend of racing the previous year's cars just so they could maximise the potential (ie. reliability) of the new car for that particular year.

McLaren famously tested the MP4-18 to death in 2002/03 and it never raced at a GP in '03 whilst running a parallel program to update the MP4-17 and spec D/MP4-17D to the MP4-19
The 19 wasnt an updated 17D though, it was just a renamed 18 that was still crap until the B spec came in.

[chuck34]

I never knew that Benetton did that, but there was a reason that Renault had two design cheifs earlier this decade (Mark Smith and Rob Bell, Smith is now with Red Bull though) and they would be working on alternate years cars.

As for the main topic, Renault have used the trick of scraping development one season in favour of the next several times before, most succesfully in 04/05 when they stoped working on a race winner that was still a long way off Ferrari in favour of the following car which won the title. It doesnt always work though as last years car still wasnt a contender even though they scrapt 07.

Maybe I'm mistaken about when the switch from Benetton to Renault was. That sounds like what I was talking about. I guess I was thinking it was long enough ago that it was still Benetton. At any rate, does anyone know if that is still going on?

[wedge]

The 19 wasnt an updated 17D though, it was just a renamed 18 that was still crap until the B spec came in.


Never said it was. I was just pointing out how developing the MP4-18 threw a curve ball. Though didn't they add bits from the 18 to the 17 and called it 17D?

[jens]

As has been said, we have all kinds of examples of "long preparation period" for a new season, and failures seem to be a majority among them. All in all it comes down to the success of design concept. If it's flawed, then it doesn't matter, how much time a team has in its hands, a conceptually poor car won't come good (like the MP4/18 and it's successor 19, which McLaren started developing already in 2002) and a totally new design approach will be needed to come out of the hole.

Bad precedent? Nope. We had just one example, which happened to pay off in spectacular style and secondly we have had a huge rules shake-up, which forced everyone to start with a blank sheet of paper. If the technical rules in 2009 were exactly the same as in 2008, Honda would have found it clearly more difficult to reach the top.

[Valve Bounce]

They scrapped development on their '08 program to focus on '09, and because it worked out for them, now we're hearing grumblings from other teams that they may cease development on their '09 car to focus on 2010, most notably McLaren.

Does anyone else find that trend disgusting? It's like a tennis player throwing the last game of a set just so he can begin the next one on serve. Or football / basketball teams throwing in the towel at the end of the season to ensure a better draft position.

Sounds like Carlton when they wanted to first pick on Kreuzer. So they tanked.

[JSH]

They scrapped development on their '08 program to focus on '09, and because it worked out for them, now we're hearing grumblings from other teams that they may cease development on their '09 car to focus on 2010, most notably McLaren.

Does anyone else find that trend disgusting? It's like a tennis player throwing the last game of a set just so he can begin the next one on serve. Or football / basketball teams throwing in the towel at the end of the season to ensure a better draft position.

No. Sounds like a perfectly logical thing to do. .... assuming of course they'll enter next years championship... I've lost track if they're one of the ones threatening not to.

[Sleeper]

Maybe I'm mistaken about when the switch from Benetton to Renault was. That sounds like what I was talking about. I guess I was thinking it was long enough ago that it was still Benetton. At any rate, does anyone know if that is still going on?
Benetton were bought by Renault in 2000 and the name changed for 2002. As far as I know when Mark Smith left Renault a few years ago they stoped that.

[Sleeper]

Never said it was. I was just pointing out how developing the MP4-18 threw a curve ball. Though didn't they add bits from the 18 to the 17 and called it 17D?
Sorry, the way you wrote it it looked like you did.

The 17D was completely developed by the test team on their own whilst the main design team led by Newey worked on the 18, I've never heard any suggestion of there being any crossover between the two mainly because the original idea was to introduce the 18 after a few races.

Interestingly, Newey as always said the 19 was just the 18 with a few small pieces added and the 19B was the proper new car.