Red Bull gives you ... flexing wings?

[johny]

there're a sets of test to dictaminate if an element flexes or not, if it passes those test then you can't say it's illegal

[mistareno]

there're a sets of test to dictaminate if an element flexes or not, if it passes those test then you can't say it's illegal

Bingo! Give that man a cigar.

If it passes all the tests and is legal, then what is unfair about it?

[Mikey_s]

I'm not sure that anyone has suggested RBR are cheating (OK, granted the gif image is titled "cheatwing", but....).

My first post stated that this is an exploitation of the rule book, and I have no problem with that - I also said that it clearly passes scrutineering, as indeed it must do in order to have been permitted.

As for the discussion about the movement... it is "clear"! If you cannot see it I suggest you look again, in particular at the movement of the trailing edge versus the leading edge - the whole structure is indeed very stiff and there is no 'flexing', but the entire rear wing assembly is rotating about the leading edge. It's a smart piece of design and it is not 'normal' flexing, but obviously engineered to do precisely that... we are not discussing the Emporers new clothes here...

My view is that it IS legal - it must be otherwise RBR would not have passed scrutineering - Provided that the FIA does nothing to change the scrutineering checks we will see the other teams developing similar technology and then when the whole field has them Max will move and waste a shedload of money by banning it - AFTER the R&D money is spent.

Carry on cost cutting Max....

[Mikey_s]

According to Autosport there will be a new test for rear wings using additional weight on the end fences and a reduced tolerance for movement (2mm in place of 5)

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/59258

[Jersey Tom]

Did anyone consider looking at video of the rest of the cars and see how much their rear wing deflects?

As was pointed out.. you put serious weight on that rear wing (i'd imagine it could easily be in the 500-750+ kg range at 200mph), the damn thing is gonna move. If it passes tech, more power to em!

Cheat to win. Would I do such a thing to get a .05% performance increase? Damn right. Least its not as bad as BTCC. The stories I've heard from that of cheating and getting away with it are hilarious.

[Tom]

The famous BTCC trick was of course dipping the roof of the car in acid to make it thinner and lose weight as a result. Now who the hell thought of that?

[Jersey Tom]

Two good ones re: BTCC from Claude Rouelle..

1) Lining one set of wheels with massive amounts of lead and putting that set on for weigh-in, then innocently changing to a different set of tires in the pits. When one of these extremely heavy leaden wheels rolled away and made a hole in a concrete barrier, people became suspicious.

2) Running a much different final drive gear than allowed, and screaming past the competition. Obviously the officials had a look at that one, got under the car and started taking stuff apart to get to the gear. Meanwhile Claude takes the homologated gear, heats it up with a torch, and puts it under his arm. Just as the officials are getting the gear off Claude 'accidently' tugs the lamp cord and it goes out, the car gear falls into a big bucket of oil. Claude drops his gear in the bucket of oil. Light comes out, Claude pulls the homologated gear out of the bucket and the officials are happy.. much to the dismay of the competition.

[m3_lover]

Here is acouple of good stories for you guys

One involved the cars driven by Darrell Waltrip during one of his championship seasons. Nelson found a way to fill the entire roll-cage of the car with several hundred pounds of buckshot. The car was weighed before the race, and found legal. But when Waltrip went onto the track during pace laps, and reached the banking, he'd pull a hidden lever which allowed the lead to pour from under the car and roll harmlessly down the banking. On the radio, Waltrip would indicate a successful drop by yelling "Bombs Away!" Then, with the car weighing considerably less than the mandated weight, Waltrip would proceed to blow away the field. NASCAR never discovered this trick. Nelson ingeniously located the exit spout where the jack was positioned. When NASCAR inspectors raised the car with a jack, they concealed the evidence, and cleared the car to qualify and run.

"It's the most ingenious thing I have seen in 30 years of motorsport." admitted FIA President Max Mosley

Smokey Yunicka, A master in the gray area

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smokey_Yunick

some stories of his

As with most successful racers, Yunick was a master of the gray area straddling the rules. Perhaps his most famous exploit was his #13 1966 Chevrolet Chevelle, driven by Curtis Turner. The car was so much faster than the competition during testing that they were certain that cheating was involved; some sort of aerodynamic enhancement was strongly suspected, but the car's profile seemed to be entirely stock, as the rules required. It was eventually discovered that what Yunick had built was an exact 7/8 scale replica of the production car. Since then, NASCAR has required each race car's roof, hood, and trunk to fit templates representing the production car's exact profile.

Another Yunick improvisation was getting around the regulations specifying a maximum size for the fuel tank, by using eleven foot coils of 2-inch diameter tubing for the fuel line to add about 5 gallons[1] to the car's fuel capacity. Once, NASCAR officials came up with a list of nine items for Yunick to fix before the car would be allowed on the track. The suspicious NASCAR officials had removed the tank for inspection. Yunick started the car with no gas tank and said "Better make it ten",[2] and drove it back to the pits. He used a basketball in the fuel tank which could be inflated when the car's fuel capacity was checked and deflated for the race.

Rule: Minimum ride height checked by sliding a pipe with a diameter equal to min ride height under the car.
Response: Had mechanics standing at the ready to help inspectors ... the car was parked on their toes, until Smokey pissed off an inspector and the inspector shoved one of the mechanics away from the car ... the mechanic got a bruised bum. Smokey's response was to put rows of aspirin tablets on top of the springs. The car would pass tech inspection (which were then only before the race), and as soon as it hit a bump all of the tablets would shatter and the car would drop.

Apparently another trick of Smokeys was to lift the car up on its springs to the legal height clearance to pass over the inspector's gauge and then freeze the shock absorbers with dry ice so the car stayed at the legal height long enough to be cleared.

[mini696]

Nelson found a way to fill the entire roll-cage of the car with several hundred pounds of buckshot. The car was weighed before the race, and found legal. But when Waltrip went onto the track during pace laps, and reached the banking, he'd pull a hidden lever which allowed the lead to pour from under the car and roll harmlessly down the banking. On the radio, Waltrip would indicate a successful drop by yelling "Bombs Away!" Then, with the car weighing considerably less than the mandated weight, Waltrip would proceed to blow away the field. NASCAR never discovered this trick. Nelson ingeniously located the exit spout where the jack was positioned. When NASCAR inspectors raised the car with a jack, they concealed the evidence, and cleared the car to qualify and run.

This was a very common thing throughout the teams, and you can still walk the tracks today and find buckshot through the grass.

[RacingManiac]

Two good ones re: BTCC from Claude Rouelle..

1) Lining one set of wheels with massive amounts of lead and putting that set on for weigh-in, then innocently changing to a different set of tires in the pits. When one of these extremely heavy leaden wheels rolled away and made a hole in a concrete barrier, people became suspicious.

2) Running a much different final drive gear than allowed, and screaming past the competition. Obviously the officials had a look at that one, got under the car and started taking stuff apart to get to the gear. Meanwhile Claude takes the homologated gear, heats it up with a torch, and puts it under his arm. Just as the officials are getting the gear off Claude 'accidently' tugs the lamp cord and it goes out, the car gear falls into a big bucket of oil. Claude drops his gear in the bucket of oil. Light comes out, Claude pulls the homologated gear out of the bucket and the officials are happy.. much to the dismay of the competition.

ahh good ol' Claude....

In the Monaco broadcast there were a pretty good onboard shot of the trailing edge of the Renault frontwing flexing....

As said though, much like the accusation for Ferrari's wing last season, if it passes the test, then by the letter and by the extend of the scrutineer's ability, it is 100% legal. There were never any concrete lettering that outlines the punishment(or how to judge) whether something satisfies the "intent" of the rule...

[pRo]

The famous BTCC trick was of course dipping the roof of the car in acid to make it thinner and lose weight as a result. Now who the hell thought of that?

That's a very old trick, I recall reading it was first used in US in the 30's.

Another "great" cheat is to dip the air filter into something that gives you more go, make few very fast laps and after that the evidence has already disappeared.

[modbaraban]

going further off topic:

Remembre this thread? viewtopic.php?t=4278
When I first read that blog by Heikki right after the Spanish GP it said something like this:

POST RACE
On the slowing down lap....I have to go really slowly and try to go off the line to pick up some debris with my tires, to be on the safe side when the car is weighed at the end of the race, because we run it as close to the minimum weight limit as possible.

later I needed to refer to it and found that page EDITED:

POST RACE
On the slowing down lap....I have to go really slowly so as not to waste fuel, because the car is weighed at the end of the race, and we run it as close to the minimum weight limit as possible.

which is nonesense as the car is weighed with out fuel (correct me if I'm wrong)

Believe it or not....

[Mikey_s]

Mod,

picking up marbles on the run down lap is a trickl used by all of the teams... a common sense precaution - in any case it is really only replacing what has worn away during the race. I recall Martin Brundle talking about 'cheat' tricks of yesteryear and mechanics with pockets full of ballbearings to drop into the exhaust pipe of cars at the finish.. hence the winning cars bing placed in parc fermé after the finish nowadays and nobody being allowed near. I must confess some suspicion about whether any 'mass transfer' takes place during the celebratory hugs that take place with the drivers at the end too!

As for the NASCAR stories; they are very entertaining, but I would place them directly into the 'cheating' category. Whereas flexing wings are elegantly designed to work around the rulebook - a kind of tax avoidance, rather than tax evasion. This is an issue that I belive is a direct consequence of overly prescriptive regulations. If the regulations were more free (e.g. specific surface area of wing, maximum deflection under race conditions, which should be easily measurable using digital photography), then the rules would be more easy to enforce. Furthermore, if the actual reason for banning moveable aero devices was indeed for safety then why not introduce penalties for failure that are so draconian that no team will risk a failure; e.g. threaten the teams with disqualification, or loss of all championship points for any component failure (irrespective of whether anyone is hurt) and the teams will ensure that they are designed safely.

[pRo]

POST RACE
On the slowing down lap....I have to go really slowly and try to go off the line to pick up some debris with my tires, to be on the safe side when the car is weighed at the end of the race, because we run it as close to the minimum weight limit as possible.

later I needed to refer to it and found that page EDITED:

POST RACE
On the slowing down lap....I have to go really slowly so as not to waste fuel, because the car is weighed at the end of the race, and we run it as close to the minimum weight limit as possible.

Interesting edit, I wonder why they did it. Like Mikey said, everyone does it anyway, it's not a secret. During last season they even aired one radio conversation, where the team reminded the driver to collect the debris into his tyres. (was it Schumi? I can't remember)

[modbaraban]

Interesting edit, I wonder why they did it. Like Mikey said, everyone does it anyway, it's not a secret. During last season they even aired one radio conversation, where the team reminded the driver to collect the debris into his tyres. (was it Schumi? I can't remember)

Looks like this was on Heikki's mind when he wrote it:

picking up marbles on the run down lap is a trick used by all of the teams... a common sense precaution - in any case it is really only replacing what has worn away during the race.

and this was the point of someone who 'asked' him to edit it

picking up marbles on the run down lap is a trick used by all of the teams... a common sense precaution - in any case it is really only replacing what has worn away during the race.