If we cut mgu-k to max 60kw

[DiogoBrand]

How about forcing teams to load up the car with weight?

100grams per point: That would liven things up. I guess even Marussia will be able to keep up with a Merc carrying an extra 30kg

Seriously though:

• Remove all development constraints on engines.
• Limit the amount they can charge the teams.
• Prevent a multi-tier system. An engine manufacturer cannot give team A the top spec engine and team B the previous year engine. If you are supply an engine you must give the current spec.
• Place a defined limit in HP as measured at the wheels.

I agree on all but the HP limit. This 'token' regulation is actually backfiring massively: It's preventing everyone from catching up to Mercedes, and I'd bet anything you want it's actually making the manufacturers spend even more than they would otherwise on development since they need to get great gains with very little room for trial and error.

[Edax]

Since quite some time, actually. Mass dampers, OTEB, double diffusers, 2003 changes to the points system and the list goes on and on. That's only in the last 15 years (I didn't watch F1 before that so I wouldn't know much). Regulation changes to reduce dominance are a common thing and have in general proven to have a positive effect on the sport.

Closing loop holes in the rules that a team exploited to gain a competitive edge, is not the same as penalizing someone for doing a better job. And a case could be made that last year the FRIC ban was an attempt to reduce Merc's dominance......

Next race we should give Ushain Bolt a pair of flip-flops
{edit: Grumble, I see FO beat me to it}

I fully agree. Rectifying an unintended loophole in the regulations is something else than regulating dominance. As far as I know Mercedes has not done something wrong so they have earned the right to be dominant.

For me F1 is a sport which is as much about building amazing machines as driver skill. It is not by coincidence that the greatest names are associated with the greatest machines (Fangio W196, Clark, Lotus 25, Senna MP-4/4, Schumacher, F2002). BTW Nobody compained in those era's about the sport being boring.

Maybe things can be done to make racing more interesting. But if we start handing out arbitrary penalties to technical dominant teams we can be sure that the sports will never produce a Rudolf Uhlenhaut, Colin Chapman or Adrian Newey again.

[turbof1]

Sometimes I'm truly baffled by some of the suggestions.

If you really want to tackle the Merc dominance in a fair way, you have to open up the regulations. I can agree that the likes of Renault and Honda are locked into their situation due the strict development rules. However, selectively applying restrictions is asking for problems. Since when do we punish success through effort and sacrifices?

Again: my suggestion would be to open up development regulations for everybody, including Mercedes. The law of diminishing returns will take care of the rest.

Since quite some time, actually. Mass dampers, OTEB, double diffusers, 2003 changes to the points system and the list goes on and on. That's only in the last 15 years (I didn't watch F1 before that so I wouldn't know much). Regulation changes to reduce dominance are a common thing and have in general proven to have a positive effect on the sport.

Mercedes did a good job with their 2014 PU, well done, congratulations and a very well deserved double world title. That this dominance is followed by another double title in 2015 is probably acceptable. That the advantage should stretch all the way to 2020 however, is ludicrous in my opinion. To see that any suggestions to change this are played down as nonsense, is beyond me.

As a sidenote I would also like to say I find it very low that the topic starter is being downvoted for making a suggestion and sparking an interesting discussion.

Which why I am suggesting to give the competition the change to catch up, rather than disadvantaging Mercedes. It will also imply that the competition will have to work hard since Mercedes gets the same development opportunities, but crucially since Mercedes is further up the diminishing returns, Mercedes is automatically and by nature hindered in finding additional progress.

[Per]

Since quite some time, actually. Mass dampers, OTEB, double diffusers, 2003 changes to the points system and the list goes on and on. That's only in the last 15 years (I didn't watch F1 before that so I wouldn't know much). Regulation changes to reduce dominance are a common thing and have in general proven to have a positive effect on the sport.

Closing loop holes in the rules that a team exploited to gain a competitive edge, is not the same as penalizing someone for doing a better job. And a case could be made that last year the FRIC ban was an attempt to reduce Merc's dominance......

I see your point. I think closing a loophole is in essence a rule change too - the team that sees the loophole closed is also penalized for doing a better job! But it is definitely true that such cases are easier to justify. Still, I maintain that F1 as a whole needs to admit that the current rule set is a historical mistake and needs to be amended, for the sake of the sport.

[DiogoBrand]

Since quite some time, actually. Mass dampers, OTEB, double diffusers, 2003 changes to the points system and the list goes on and on. That's only in the last 15 years (I didn't watch F1 before that so I wouldn't know much). Regulation changes to reduce dominance are a common thing and have in general proven to have a positive effect on the sport.

Closing loop holes in the rules that a team exploited to gain a competitive edge, is not the same as penalizing someone for doing a better job. And a case could be made that last year the FRIC ban was an attempt to reduce Merc's dominance......

I see your point. I think closing a loophole is in essence a rule change too - the team that sees the loophole closed is also penalized for doing a better job! But it is definitely true that such cases are easier to justify. Still, I maintain that F1 as a whole needs to admit that the current rule set is a historical mistake and needs to be amended, for the sake of the sport.

It's easy to say that, and I also 'sort of' think so. The hard bit is suggesting something better which doesn't involve some sort of Balance of Performance action. F1 development is about research and advancements, and those things cost money(and a lot), so basically the team with more money available more often than not will dominate, making for a boring grid, especially after tobacco companies were prevented from dumping loads of money into the teams. Wich makes me wish for some cost cap even though I'm not sure it would work.

[Cold Fussion]

It's easy to say that, and I also 'sort of' think so. The hard bit is suggesting something better which doesn't involve some sort of Balance of Performance action. F1 development is about research and advancements, and those things cost money(and a lot), so basically the team with more money available more often than not will dominate, making for a boring grid, especially after tobacco companies were prevented from dumping loads of money into the teams. Wich makes me wish for some cost cap even though I'm not sure it would work.

You need a lot of money to be successful in F1, but Toyota and Honda showed a lot of money does not buy success.

[Per]

I see your point. I think closing a loophole is in essence a rule change too - the team that sees the loophole closed is also penalized for doing a better job! But it is definitely true that such cases are easier to justify. Still, I maintain that F1 as a whole needs to admit that the current rule set is a historical mistake and needs to be amended, for the sake of the sport.

It's easy to say that, and I also 'sort of' think so. The hard bit is suggesting something better which doesn't involve some sort of Balance of Performance action. F1 development is about research and advancements, and those things cost money(and a lot), so basically the team with more money available more often than not will dominate, making for a boring grid, especially after tobacco companies were prevented from dumping loads of money into the teams. Wich makes me wish for some cost cap even though I'm not sure it would work.

This is why topic starter's idea is so interesting: it is NOT a balance of performance action where one team is penalized more than others, unlike suggestions to put in extra ballast or your suggestion of cutting two of Merc's cilinders in your previous attempt to ridicule this topic. Put in a certain limit somewhere, which counts for everyone. A level playing field is maintained but dominance is reduced.

I believe it was in 2005 where for the first time a rev limit was introduced, proving to be a great measure to reduce dominance. There was no rev limit for Ferrari alone, it was the same for everyone, and it helped making 2005 a lot more entertaining than 2004. Ideas like these are what F1 should be looking into, in my opinion.

[DiogoBrand]

I see your point. I think closing a loophole is in essence a rule change too - the team that sees the loophole closed is also penalized for doing a better job! But it is definitely true that such cases are easier to justify. Still, I maintain that F1 as a whole needs to admit that the current rule set is a historical mistake and needs to be amended, for the sake of the sport.

It's easy to say that, and I also 'sort of' think so. The hard bit is suggesting something better which doesn't involve some sort of Balance of Performance action. F1 development is about research and advancements, and those things cost money(and a lot), so basically the team with more money available more often than not will dominate, making for a boring grid, especially after tobacco companies were prevented from dumping loads of money into the teams. Wich makes me wish for some cost cap even though I'm not sure it would work.

This is why topic starter's idea is so interesting: it is NOT a balance of performance action where one team is penalized more than others, unlike suggestions to put in extra ballast or your suggestion of cutting two of Merc's cilinders in your previous attempt to ridicule this topic. Put in a certain limit somewhere, which counts for everyone. A level playing field is maintained but dominance is reduced.

I believe it was in 2005 where for the first time a rev limit was introduced, proving to be a great measure to reduce dominance. There was no rev limit for Ferrari alone, it was the same for everyone, and it helped making 2005 a lot more entertaining than 2004. Ideas like these are what F1 should be looking into, in my opinion.

When this v6 design was introduced, the main idea was to increase efficiency, reduce emissions and maybe develop some new technologies for road cars which are also walking on this "hybrid turbo" direction.
Then comes Mercedes and develops a design that is very efficient, and with the same amount of fuel of the others is capable of developing a lot more power by harnessing the energy from the fuel in an extraordinarily efficient way, which was the goal of this formula in the first place.
Then after two seasons of domination by Merc and incompetence both from other engine manufacturers as well as rule makers (with the token system) someone decides that this edge Mercedes conquered by using this formula in a very efficient way should be taken off just because 'the racing is boring'. In my opinion if you wanna limit the ERS deployment you can just bring back the V8's because then all this investment on V6's was for nothing.

[NL_Fer]

Even with mgu-k reduced, teams still need to develop the exhaust/harvest part. I think Mercedes would still have an edge, but you are just giving Honda and Renault a change to return.

Thinking about it, i think increasing then fuel flow, would give the same effect. Little less hybrid, more about Ice.

I strongly believe things have to change for the sake of the sport. Merc did a great job with this powerunit, but they also forced Mclaren, their main rival out of competition with this new engine. Force India and Manor are to slow, Williams is tuned to speed, just enough as needed.

[drunkf1fan]

I see your point. I think closing a loophole is in essence a rule change too - the team that sees the loophole closed is also penalized for doing a better job! But it is definitely true that such cases are easier to justify. Still, I maintain that F1 as a whole needs to admit that the current rule set is a historical mistake and needs to be amended, for the sake of the sport.

It's easy to say that, and I also 'sort of' think so. The hard bit is suggesting something better which doesn't involve some sort of Balance of Performance action. F1 development is about research and advancements, and those things cost money(and a lot), so basically the team with more money available more often than not will dominate, making for a boring grid, especially after tobacco companies were prevented from dumping loads of money into the teams. Wich makes me wish for some cost cap even though I'm not sure it would work.

This is why topic starter's idea is so interesting: it is NOT a balance of performance action where one team is penalized more than others, unlike suggestions to put in extra ballast or your suggestion of cutting two of Merc's cilinders in your previous attempt to ridicule this topic. Put in a certain limit somewhere, which counts for everyone. A level playing field is maintained but dominance is reduced.

I believe it was in 2005 where for the first time a rev limit was introduced, proving to be a great measure to reduce dominance. There was no rev limit for Ferrari alone, it was the same for everyone, and it helped making 2005 a lot more entertaining than 2004. Ideas like these are what F1 should be looking into, in my opinion.

The problem is a rev limit on a flat v8 is easy and would give each team very similar performance presuming one engine couldn't break say 15k and the others couldn't, all limited to 15k would bring the slowest engine into play. The current engines are far far more complex. If you limited ICE output this would kill Honda more than any other team and play further into Mercedes hands with great harvesting. If you killed harvesting and pushed the performance towards the ICE's power then you change how the entire engine works. Merc without the ERS might simply work very badly while a Honda would work fine. There is no easy thing to pick on, not least because of the lets call it two part engine design, some tracks show a much bigger benefit from ers and others don't so how do you determine who can use how much ers power and at what track to be fair.

If Honda's engine is lets say 20% smaller, and you implement a limit of lets say 2MJ harvesting from the mgu-h, then Honda have a built in advantage in size that the others couldn't match. You are punishing those teams for designing to the intended and agreed upon rules for developing an engine to best function within the rules and rewarding Honda for screwing up their ERS system badly by making the engine so small.

I also have no idea why you think the current regulations are a mistake, it's absurd. Take literally any set of regulations and you will find one, a car that entirely screwed up everything and was dire... hell Mclaren building a all new disaster of a car in 2013 is a good example.

You can't ever judge regulations by someone screwing up. Just because more people screwed up under these regulations doesn't mean the regulations are bad, nor that the engines are, they are far more interesting engines than we've had in forever. Honda/Mclaren didn't have to absolutely rush back into the sport, Renault spent the last 3 years debating on if they were staying in F1 and under committing to the engine by not putting enough money into development and Ferrari's engine guys just flat out underestimated the usefulness of mgu-h harvesting.

If Ferrari, Honda, and Renault messed up their V8, we'd have been in the same situation in the v8 era.

[Per]

No we wouldn't, because in the first years of the V8 engine there was no engine freeze and no limit to development. Those are the regulations I was referring to as a historical mistake, not the fact that we have a V6 'hybrid'.

As a side note, even with the engine freeze Renault were initially allowed to do some catching up to level out the field, if I recall correctly.

Luckily things are moving in the right direction with Autosport reporting that tokens for next year are increased to 32 and will be available in-season.

[dren]

You'd also have to cut fingers off or toes off winning drivers to make the driver situation fair too, I'd suppose...

[Andres125sx]

Which why I am suggesting to give the competition the change to catch up, rather than disadvantaging Mercedes. It will also imply that the competition will have to work hard since Mercedes gets the same development opportunities, but crucially since Mercedes is further up the diminishing returns, Mercedes is automatically and by nature hindered in finding additional progress.

I agree that´d be the best solution from the competition pov, but I see two problems there

1- Costs. With people complaining about the price of current PUs free development can´t help in that regard
2- Time needed to reach diminishing returns, wich could take several seasons considering how new the technology is

The other day I posted around here an idea wich could reduce both problems... if I´m not missing something, wich I surely am

To reduce that period until all manufacturers equal Mercedes (in this case) perfomance, but controlling costs, what if the token system is changed so the team winning is allowed to develop the PU, but a bit less than the rest?

Imagine if 2nd in WCC have let say 2 more tokens than the winning team/manufacturer, 3th 4 more and so on. They all can develop the engine so best engineer can still do his job, but the rest have a chance to catch up?

Not sure if 2 added tokens per position is too high or too low, but the idea is allowing a bit more development to the teams lower in the table, to speed up the process, but not too much so the team doing the best job still can enjoy their deserved advantage at least for 2 seasons.

Imagine applying to current situation. In 2014 Mercedes is the best by far. Nothing changes. But for 2015 the rest can develop their PU a bit more than Mercedes, but in this case, with so big advantage, it shouldn´t be enough to equal Mercedes perfomance. They did it so much better they deserve 2 consecutive seasons of domination, but next season with 2 seasons developing their PU less than the rest, domination should be neutralized.

The idea is to stablish some sort of artificial diminishing return system while controlling development costs and avoiding too long domination periods

[chip engineer]

To reduce that period until all manufacturers equal Mercedes (in this case) perfomance, but controlling costs, what if the token system is changed so the team winning is allowed to develop the PU, but a bit less than the rest?

Imagine if 2nd in WCC have let say 2 more tokens than the winning team/manufacturer, 3th 4 more and so on. They all can develop the engine so best engineer can still do his job, but the rest have a chance to catch up?
...

Something like that seems reasonable to me. It is similar to the draft for rookie players in the NFL and NBA, which seems to work fairly well.
Potentially, it also provides a reward of saving money for the manufacturer that did a good job the first time.

[wuzak]

No we wouldn't, because in the first years of the V8 engine there was no engine freeze and no limit to development.

2006 was the only year for which development of the V8 was not "frozen".