I tried to search in the forum and around the internet but I couldn't find the motivation behind the ban of high nosecone for 2012.
Is a way to limit the flow of air feeding the diffuser, or it's banned for safety reasons, like driver vision?
Anyway I think that rules are becoming way too strict, limiting innovation and restricting the areas where the teams are free to develop new solutions.
I fear that too many restrictions will make more difficult for a team to come up with some ideas that can give them a clear advantage, not at an affordable cost at least.
A more open approach to rules definition could give the possibility to teams to differentiate themselves from the others, choosing different development directions that can give results in less time (and less money). The current approach leads to the exasperation of research in the few areas still free to develop, so every little improvement to the car performances will cost more and more.
But I understand that the direction taken by who rules the sport is not what I would like to see, the fact is that we are witnessing the transformation of the sport from a sort of competitive technical research environment to a mere show.
The problem is that the sport needs spectators to retrieve the funds to go on, and often spectators are people who are interested in just shunts and overtakes, and don't give importance to the technical side of the sport.
To grant a broadly acceptable show, the more similar the cars are in terms of performance, the better, but this defeats the very concept of competition.
So I agree totally with wesley123, but I fear that F1 will never be as open as we hope, maybe in the future someone will find money and strength to organize a new series, racing on real tracks with real cars with a light framework of rules granting a real competition.
Ok, sorry for the long rant, but this situation turns me sad