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NL_Fer wrote:Windtunnels are already restricted to 40h a week and 60% scale models. Why ban them?
Now a driver can only use 4 engines a year, as a cost saving rule, but 100 or more are dynoed till they blow.
Bring back the old days, when you never knew if that fast new engine would reach the finish or blow on then laps.
So i say, more engines on track each year, unlimited development, but ban of heavily clamp down engine dyno usage.
Wind tunnel usage was restricted on cost grounds in 2008 although if a team has a $150m budget it'll spend $150m each year, it'll just buy different things. It's no different to telling my wife she can't spend £300 on a pair of shoes so she comes back from a day at the shops with a pair of £150 shoes and a £150 handbag.
The old days of pre engine dyno testing? When was that? 1920?
I agree banning wind tunnels is a completely stupid idea. It is even frustrating to see this idea even manages to stay around. If CFD had been better teams would have stopped using WTs already. Both are having their advantages and disadvantages. They need to work together and everybody should be aware of that. It will not save any costs to ban them. The same amount of money will simply be spent on CFD, which is absolutely not cheap either. You need to invest into supercomputers which will be outdated very quickly.
The only reason I can see why some people are promoting this is because they have a too small wind tunnel themselves. Instead of taking care of their own business they don’t want to allow other teams to use their wind tunnels For me that is just dirty tricks, so don’t fall into these stories.
Ive always been a fan of a graduated development plan for wind tunnels,
Each team has 100 days a year with a 60% scale model running them 8 hours for each day. Each of the top 6 teams must grant access to a lower team for the same amount of time. So Red Bull/Toro Rosso, Ferrari/Haas etc... No running off to Toyota, only 6 sanctioned tunnels will be allowed in F1: Mercedes, Ferrari, Red Bull, Williams, Mclaren, Lotus/Renault. Teams are regulated to spend no more than 45 days on any current year car, a current car will be one that is seen at the common launch weekend where all teams launch their cars the last weekend in January. The reason id take a communal launch is so that teams can have a set production planner and also make sure that all cars are shown at close to the same time. With 4 cars launched a day over 3 days.
When it comes to Testing, each team has 21 days a year, 12 days pre season/4 days post season/5 days in season. Teams can trade a day of testing for 5 days in the tunnel on their next seasons car (to a maximum of 3 days loss of testing) or a 10 full 24 hour days running their CFD at full capacity on next seasons car (Up to maximum of 3 days loss of testing).
CFD will be limited to running at 6 teraflops for the entire year, but for 100 full days of 24 hour running, the teams can run it at full capacity. Teams cannot, however outsource CFD to the 'cloud' or any other server apart from the servers that the team has on their site. Teams can do the trade as above in the tunnel section.
Teams need to be able to have access to quality tools, however they need these days to show efficiency to use it. Theres no way a team needs to spend millions on things. Restrict the use of the tools, but whilst you are at it, free up the regulations in areas where the teams can gain lap time in a cost, resource and time efficient manner. As thats the focus in the company i work for, pend the money intelligently, gain custom and use what time you have to better the business for profit.
As for engine dynos, i think would limit them in a similar way to wind tunnels, however i would limit them to running a engine to 250km/h, however for 8 hours for 100 days a year they can run them to 350km/h. There is no trade off there as well, just 100 days, 800 hours. But i would open a engine championship to decide on how many tokens are available for development. Id look at something like this:
1: 20 Tokens in closed season = 5 Tokens in season.
2. 25 Tokens in closed season = 8 Tokens in season.
3. 30 Tokens in closed season = 10 Tokens in season.
4. 40 Tokens in closed Season = 12 Tokens in season.
However all unused closed season tokens must be used in December/January with all 3+ token items homologated for start of the year date on 1st February, and all in season tokens must have been used up for 1st September. This way costs will be controlled to a point, however it will also mean that engine builders won't get too stressed and they can schedule production planners as well. And yes, it is a success tax, the more an engine is successful, the more it gets taxed, meaning that poorer engines can catch up and it doesn't become a arms race. In theory a P4 engine could use 28 tokens and time locks out the 12 other potential tokens in 1st Feb, but that may just be enough to make them the best engine that season.
Engine manufacturers don't just use full fledged, F1-ready engines as dyno mules, there are also some single cylinder test engines that are used for the combustion concept etc, presumably fed by an externally powered forced induction system. This will be hard to police for the scrutineers, all current engine manufacturers also produce engines for road cars and the test mules (the single cylinder ones etc., not race ready ones producing gazillion bhp) could easily be shown as development for road cars.
You can extend this argument to any test mule engine that has some difference from the actual engine used in the race.
You guys know that the engines are on their way to complete homologation lockdown right? Remember they've only been in the cars for 2 years now, so obviously there's more testing. Aerodynamics isn't some new radical field that the teams need a chance to get a handle on, like the hybrid systems are.
^ if you limit the electricity the teams use, THEN they will run test mules indefinitely... 10 test mules, each developing 700 hp(514 kw), that's 5 MW.
Enough to power a small town.
*jk
Engine developement costs aren't generally passed-on to the teams, instead they are funded by major manufacturers. A cap on maximum engine cost would guarantee the smaller teams are insulated from these costs. If a manufacturer wants to spend its own money on engine development, let them go for it.
they should limit the amount of time spent on free practice sessions like Hulk said , say they could reduce the amount of running from 90 90 and 60 mins to 60 60 and 45 mins, lets take 20 events so that's 75 mins of running saved per weekend and they could save 25 hours a year assuming we take 20 events per year and thus we can create 3 days of testing at a circuit in the uk.
livinglikethathuh wrote:^ if you limit the electricity the teams use, THEN they will run test mules indefinitely... 10 test mules, each developing 700 hp(514 kw), that's 5 MW.
Enough to power a small town.
*jk
But their workers would have to work in darkness as they couldn't run the lights.
Give them an energy allowance, then they can decide to use it on a wind tunnel, a supercomputer or testing...
livinglikethathuh wrote:^ if you limit the electricity the teams use, THEN they will run test mules indefinitely... 10 test mules, each developing 700 hp(514 kw), that's 5 MW.
Enough to power a small town.
*jk
But their workers would have to work in darkness as they couldn't run the lights.
Give them an energy allowance, then they can decide to use it on a wind tunnel, a supercomputer or testing...
Joking aside, I really think you'll create that kind of situations where the staff will not even be able to make a cup of coffee.
A seperate energy budget should be allocated for non-productive tools. Well, one could argue that your morning coffee increases productivity, but you get the jist.
livinglikethathuh wrote:^ if you limit the electricity the teams use, THEN they will run test mules indefinitely... 10 test mules, each developing 700 hp(514 kw), that's 5 MW.
Enough to power a small town.
*jk
But their workers would have to work in darkness as they couldn't run the lights.
Give them an energy allowance, then they can decide to use it on a wind tunnel, a supercomputer or testing...
The interesting thing about that plan is that over time, CFD will become more and more appealing to the teams. While the chip makers aren't making enormous strides each year in terms of chip performance, they are still making great strides in terms of reducing the power consumption of the current level of performance. Teams CFD super computers could get exponentially more powerful each year.
