2021 Regulations Released

[airshifter]

What do you think? Has the 2021 F1 regulation defined a new fomula or is it a true evolution of F1?

I am still struggling with the absence of the engineering competition between the constructors. That absence makes me wonder if the 2021 regulation is true to F1's heritage. It seems the promoters have become a virtual F1 team responsible for designing the car and the teams are suppose to build a car of that design strictly and race it against other similarly built cars. In fairness, l think we have a new fomula in reality. They have called it F1, maybe it should have been called GP1.

One very interesting aspect of the new regulation is the introduction of opensource to facilitate free technology sharing amongst the teams. The concept allows any team to innovatively develop a new component or part for their car but can share the basic design of the component with the rest of the grid. Allowing other teams to develop and improve on the design and share it with everyone else as well.

Clearly this takes a leaf from the open source software paradym that has benefited us all with operating systems like Linux etc. The implementation of opensource in the regulation is not voluntary but mandatory. Which forces innovation to be shared. Unfortunately this may inhibit innovation as few teams would be inclined to give away their competitive advantage invented at their own cost and using their own resources. And not being able to use that innovation to gain significant competitve advantage and the rewards that comes with finishing ahead of the competition from their ingenuity.

Where there are no or little inherent performance enhancement involved, l can see this area being lively with ideas, concepts and standardization of components in the future. Or at least the introduction of standards for various common components or parts evolving organically from sharing and mutual cooperation amongst the teams.

But, in reality of the competitive jungle of racing where every tiny bit here and there on the car translates to competitive advantage, there is a strong culture of selfishness that drives success in the sport which might take some time to give way for this opensource concept to evolve.

In this selfish competitve culture it is unclear if a voluntary opensource scheme would be more effective than forced sharing as imposed by the regulation. This is the main assult on the technology competition between the constructors that has made F1 unique among all other racing formula. And my main reason for having the opinion that the new regulation introduces a new formula which essentially replaces F1 as we know it.

One could argue that F1 has died a sudden death and a lookalike has been slipped in its place to foster continuity. Another perspective would be to say that the technology competition aspect of f1 has brought about spells of one team dominating for a period of time. Thus, we end up with a two tier grid of sharp end and midfield teams. You could also argue that it is the root cause driving up spending in F1. But is that really the case?

I've quoted both since they both apply.

But in the development aspect, F1 has been limited for many years. They make the rules that define the current "formula" and the teams slowly bend, break, exploit, or simply improve upon them so much that the cars become too fast, too dangerous, too unpredictable, and vastly too expensive for any new teams to have a chance unless they have huge backing. So then the "formula" rule set is further restricted, redefined, altered, or in some cases just flat out banned. I think if no restrictions were ever made, we would have top drivers who were nothing but absolute beasts of athletes, with the cream of the crop being people who could withstand G forces that would make most pass out. We currently have 300 MPH street legal cars. Could you imagine where F1 would be with antilock brakes, active aerodynamics, no longevity restrictions, etc? And they would be so fast that a lot of drivers would be dead.... all the safety tech couldn't keep up with the risks.

So in that sense, the true evolution of F1 has for decades been one of ever changing restrictions. Both in car design and rules of the racing on track. And that is probably a good thing, unless we wanted to watch remote filmed death matches with no on site spectators, and drivers that were risking real harm to life in every race.

But viewed in another light, these restrictions kept making it harder and harder for the engineers to claw back speed and lap times, and they keep doing it. The adversity of the changes over the years kept everyone working harder and made them dump more money into the sport. Though the new 2021 regs have some major changes, they will still work just as hard to find advantages. And as you have stated, inevitably some teams will rise to the top. But I suspect (and hope!) that it might not be only the teams we think will rise. Given restrictions in major components, will we find that a mid level team has had the best tacticians all along, but we simply never noticed since the fight wasn't for a podium? Will we see that a lower tier team will suddenly rise up near the front, and the only thing that kept them back was budget with the current rule book?

And I'm hoping that we see these long runs of team dominance that have existed for decades now. They made for great history, and lofted drivers to records that will probably never be matched if thenew formula works as planned. But I think we have reached a point of the cars have had too much influence of the WDC for a good 40 years or so, and a trend of it being difficult to overcome a solid advantage once a team has it.


I really don't want to know who can win a race in a dominant car. I want to know who has the skill set to keep winning races even when there are 10 cars on track capable of winning that race on that day. And I want to know that the drivers who are the best had a good chance at a seat because the teams don't need family money and huge sponsors to be able to build a car to put them in. I want a drivers championship to be decides more by drivers, and not by the hundreds of engineers squeezing out another couple hundredths of a second per lap.


I just hope it all works.