bill shoe wrote:
Two. Remeber the FIA has tightened up the floor vertical tolerance to 3 mm this year. The inboard edge of the horizontal red fin is more than 3 mm above this tolerance zone. Therefore the point where it is connected to the black vertical fin does not constitute part of the floor. This becomes a halfway plausible argument because the abrupt vertical surface it attaches to (i.e. the black vertical fin) can be claimed to not be part of the floor. If the inboard end of the red horizontal fin simply transitioned back down to the floor then this argument would lose out at that transition.
For possibility two, Red Bull would be arguing the opening is a slot in the floor that happens to be enclosed by a vertical fin that is not part of the floor. This would be using the floor vertical tolerance "against" the FIA, clever. This would seem to open the door for all kinds of floor openings as long as they abut to vertical surfaces.
I like this argument, but I am not so sure it would stand. Wouldn't the FIA (or whoever else) be able to say that whatever is "below" the 3mm tolerance zone be considered as "the floor"?
Consider there are three ways of building the floor with this fin: one would be as you said, with a slot and then a vertical fin placed in this slot. The second would be a floor with a hole on it, and then the fin on top of the floor. Or a third way, which would be to make the floor with the fin as a single part with the hole there (which I guess is how they actually do, from the photos...). I guess the only way one could say it is the first and not the second or third would be to analyse the lay up of the carbon fibre or some other test even less impractical.
That is why I think this argument might not stand, unless RB can actually prove that from their manufacturing process. Or one could go to the extreme of saying that if you "subtract" the sidepods from the car, there is huge hole in the middle of the floor... I hope it all ends with simlpler arguments.