Quote Originally Posted by Whyzars View Post
I well remember the heated discussions around ground effects in the early 80's. In fact I think Alan Jones left the sport for a year or two because of his concerns for safety with the direction that F1 was going at the time.
I concede that there were safety issues regarding ground effect in the early 80s, that was entirely down to the way the rules were framed and what the FIA allowed the teams to get away with, such as sliding skirts and adjustable ride heights, there are plenty of examples of modern racing cars which use a profiled underfloor without any major safety concerns.

CVTs don't conserve energy, they merely optimise the drive of the engine to deliver maximum power all the time, this isnt efficient, infact it can be argued that its massively inefficient to run an engine at maximum power on a constant basis! CVTs are very suitable for engines which only make good power in a very narrow power band, hence why they are deployed in snowmobiles with 2 stroke engines which have a tiny power band. Although one reason that CVTs were banned in F1 was to prevent a technological arms race based around transmissions, it could be argued that another reason why CVTs were banned and remain banned is road-car relevance, very few road cars have CVTs which is mainly down to issues of fuel efficiency and the fact that normal 4 stroke engines have good drivability and are merely unsuited to a CVT. Throw in the fact that people don't like driving a car where the engine note is constantly flat with little variation and you have a few good reasons why they have yet to catch on and hence are irrelevant in a consumer context.