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Hi all, first of all I wish you are all well and safe.
I have followed this forum for several years now but never really took the time to create an account and post my thoughts. Taking advantage of the current period, I’d like to submit a fantasy question to the whole community.
I started following F1 at the end of year 1993, and I somehow always supported the smaller teams such as Simtek or Minardi.
Now my question is the following: according to you, while complying with the 1994 rule book, which innovation do you think would have substantially benefited one of the small teams (Simtek, Pacific, Minardi, Larousse, Fortissimos) to the point that it could have been a consistent point contender, or even podium contender?
I am pointing towards: proper use of blown diffuser, raised footbox with accompanying high nose, ultra long wheelbase (current F1 race cars have a wheelbase almost 1-meter longer than 1994s cars).
What are you thoughts?
Problem is and allways will remain, financial space. Even though small budget teams can accomplish suprising great success, take Force India for example, the fact remains that financial investment is paramount for breakthroughs. If we look at Brawn benefitting from the double-deck diffuser AND the Merc engine, we must not forget that in all essence, it was actually Honda with a Merc engine, and all of Honda's money was in there, including that of the years before. Even though money itself is not a guarantee for absolute success (Toyota), it does play a big part of it.
Blown Diffusers are the result from playing with rule books, so yes, innovations, but the problem remains that innovations can only be implemented if there is financial room to actually bring them to life.
You could actually look at it from this perspective: There might have been a bunch of creative, potentially very powerfull and 'history changing' inventions made up by very small teams, let's say 'theorized', but because they don't have the money nor the means to get the money needed to even TRY that theory, they remain their hands
tied to their backs, and can only 'emulate' inventions from the big teams. Big teams that don't neccesarily come up with those creative (and potentially successfull) inventions, because they simply don't need to, or aren't pushed for it. One could argue that with the passage of time, those theorized inventions, which have always remained on the drawing board, didn't ever get the potential to be used because with the passage of time and change of rules, those designs/inventions would become obsolete anyway.
Another issue would be whether these inventions would survive the rule book, and how fast those inventions would get copied by other teams and make the 'backmarkers' start from square one again.
It's interesting though to look at Simtek for example. If i recall correctly it was one of, or perhaps even the very first design made solely with computer dynamics. Because of it's newness and the small budget, they had too big of a gap between computer and real world correlation which made Simtek not a real 'competitive' car in itself.
Unfortunately, the disaster that happened with Ratzenberger did very much negatively impact the team and was part of a greater whole which lead to Simtek's demise.
Then, lastly there is the thing of safety. It has been said more than once that F1 had to change because the cars were getting too fast and it got to dangerous situations, so the objective was not only to get the cars safer, but also by slowing them down to prevent accidents like that of Senna, Ratzenberger, Barrichello, etc.
Now let's imagine the following: Give those 1994 backmarker cars a double-deck diffuser. Would they become immediately much faster than the competition, which would not have those inventions? If they designed it well, one might argue that yes, we would see such a benefit that let's say Simtek could have been faster than the Benetton, Williams, Mclaren, and Ferrari. But we must not forget that the cars back then weren't really to be concidered 'safe' by any means whatsoever, and especially since they lacked proper budget, those inventions could very well cause their own demise as the chances would be even bigger that the 'inexperienced' drivers and 'inexperienced' team members would be prone to more error than the 'better financed, better experienced and more talented' members and drivers of the bigger teams.
If we can take a lesson from BrawnGP, we saw that due to their lack of funding for the 2009 season and because of that lack of updating the car, the competition was quickly catching up in development and even threatened their WCC and WDC potential, despite their gigantic head start. They then got bought by Mercedes but it took a while still of great talent, and even bigger investment to see the team return to success.
So 'handing out' a team like Forti or Simtek with a F-duct, double diffuser, blown diffuser, flexiwings, etc. would probably give them a benefit over the competition, but the teams still remain the same: small teams with small budgets, and thus, not able to stay ahead of the curve in the long term. Ferrari, Benetton, Williams in the time with their vast wealth would copy those designs in no time whatsoever and that would bring the small teams back to where they would have been if they never gotten the stuff in the first place: square one, at the back.
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Modern day CFD or modern day wind tunnels. So they could use vortexes and create complex wing shapes.
The cars from that era tended to have overly simple wings made of straight sections, bit history has proven that since 10 years later or so, teams have designed curved pieces, specially after the first year of a regulation. There seems to be several seconds a lap in a curve here and a flap there.
Would any of those innovations fit within the 1994 rules anyway?
What I would be curious about would be what a 1994 (or whatever year) ruleset F1 car and engine would look like, sound like, perform like ... if it was designed and built in the present and taken back to race in the past. 26 years of technological advancements and accrued knowledge would surely result in a pretty decent car for the time.
half way trough '94 teams had to bold on the plank, the floor up to that date were flat and they were trying to run as low as possible. After that, most aero concepts went out of the window I guess.
You could also say that Benneton (with or without electronic help) had a bit of a Brawn moment that year, being quite dominant with just an underpowered Ford V8 compared to the Renault V10 and Ferrari V12's.
You could also say that Benneton (with or without electronic help) had a bit of a Brawn moment that year, being quite dominant with just an underpowered Ford V8 compared to the Renault V10 and Ferrari V12's.
That's the best suggestion yet! The backmarkers should have added a Ross Brawn! That has been shown to consistently get the job done on a technical level.
To answer the question; I wouldn't say there is any innovation that they could truly have adopted. Mainly because they didn't have the resources to do so, but also, and that is something we'll see current days, because other teams will copy it reasonably quickly.
If you ask me where a large gain would be; engines. Backmarkers always were using older spec engines and thus they could be down a significant amount of horsepower.
One thing the backmarkers could have, partially, capitalized on were the rule changes in season meant to slow the cars down. For example Benetton made significant gains to the opposition just by optimizing their car to these changes.
Outside of that, what innovations were really there in that era? The next innovation was probably the shrunken sidepods, but then you'd have to question if they were even technologically feasible in 1994.
If I had to name one innovation, I would say Bargeboards. Didn't that start in 1994 on the McLaren?
OK, also maybe undercut sidepods and more naked rear-ends to enhance airflow over the diffuser.
Take away 10 years and you have the (hopefully) right answer; mid 80s Lotus was the first to introduce bargeboards. It took a while for it to truly get adopted, though.
half way trough '94 teams had to bold on the plank, the floor up to that date were flat and they were trying to run as low as possible. After that, most aero concepts went out of the window I guess.
You could also say that Benneton (with or without electronic help) had a bit of a Brawn moment that year, being quite dominant with just an underpowered Ford V8 compared to the Renault V10 and Ferrari V12's.
Also about 30cm of diffuser (except the middle 30cm) was chopped off and there was a ban on blowing the exhaust directly into the diffuser.
Bargeboards appeared in a basic form in the mid 80s. Also up to '94 the FWEP extended up to the rear edge of the front tyres. So it was less essential to have a big bargeboard.
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