Mercedes' recent straight line speed. How? Legal?
Discussion
jsf said:
You are both wrong.
DAS was legal and couldn't be ordered to be removed until the rules were changed.
X-wings were banned using the rule that allowed the FIA to make changes on safety grounds, using that as the reason allowed the FIA to mandate changes without the teams agreement.
In both cases the parts were legal until they were not, there is no such thing as spirit of the rules.
The more interesting aspect of the rules is where it's impossible to police a rule, such as the one where bodywork flexes. For those you have rules for specification and also technical directives for testing the compliance. This weekend we saw that used with the Mercedes rear wing drs gap, it passed the rules requirement but not the TD test, so was deemed illegal.
The argument there from Mercedes was that they were not allowed to repair the part or even check it, as is the normal procedure. That leaves the FIA open to accusations of rigging the outcome.
But again, no spirit of the rules are involved, the part failed the test so was not legal when tested.
DAS was legal and couldn't be ordered to be removed until the rules were changed.
X-wings were banned using the rule that allowed the FIA to make changes on safety grounds, using that as the reason allowed the FIA to mandate changes without the teams agreement.
In both cases the parts were legal until they were not, there is no such thing as spirit of the rules.
The more interesting aspect of the rules is where it's impossible to police a rule, such as the one where bodywork flexes. For those you have rules for specification and also technical directives for testing the compliance. This weekend we saw that used with the Mercedes rear wing drs gap, it passed the rules requirement but not the TD test, so was deemed illegal.
The argument there from Mercedes was that they were not allowed to repair the part or even check it, as is the normal procedure. That leaves the FIA open to accusations of rigging the outcome.
But again, no spirit of the rules are involved, the part failed the test so was not legal when tested.
- wrong in your opinion.
X wings - Safety grounds were used as an excuse - but lets be honest.. nobody wants those ugly things on cars!
DAS - very clever, but nip it in the bud to stop the price of development for other teams / a potential safety element of steering columns collapsing / steering wheels coming off on the hanger straight
Can't help but wonder....... this little push by Verstappen on the Merc's rear wing, which just happened to move the car, meaning it can't have been just a little push.... was on the side that failed scruteneering earning them a disqualification.
Why did Mercedes not use this as an excuse for the failure? I mean it's not inconceivable for a decent push on a moveable device, causing 600kg of car to move, to cause 0.2mm worth of permanent movement??
Why did Mercedes not use this as an excuse for the failure? I mean it's not inconceivable for a decent push on a moveable device, causing 600kg of car to move, to cause 0.2mm worth of permanent movement??
48k said:
You've posted this mistake twice now, on this and the Brazil thread. The Monaco wing is NOT skinny - it's the precise opposite. A Monza wing would be skinny because that is low downforce. .
Apologies you're right - I got it from Horner on Sunday when he was saying about skinny wings and what he was actually complaining was they’re running Monaco levels of downforce, why are they so fast...Edit: obviously can't copy quotes but what Horner said:
https://www.planetf1.com/news/significant-differen...
Edited by Byker28i on Wednesday 17th November 15:12
super7 said:
Can't help but wonder....... this little push by Verstappen on the Merc's rear wing, which just happened to move the car, meaning it can't have been just a little push.... was on the side that failed scruteneering earning them a disqualification.
Why did Mercedes not use this as an excuse for the failure? I mean it's not inconceivable for a decent push on a moveable device, causing 600kg of car to move, to cause 0.2mm worth of permanent movement??
Or 0.2mm worth of damage. Wasn't the part broken on one side?Why did Mercedes not use this as an excuse for the failure? I mean it's not inconceivable for a decent push on a moveable device, causing 600kg of car to move, to cause 0.2mm worth of permanent movement??
super7 said:
Can't help but wonder....... this little push by Verstappen on the Merc's rear wing, which just happened to move the car, meaning it can't have been just a little push.... was on the side that failed scruteneering earning them a disqualification.
Why did Mercedes not use this as an excuse for the failure? I mean it's not inconceivable for a decent push on a moveable device, causing 600kg of car to move, to cause 0.2mm worth of permanent movement??
IINM, Mercedes did try that angle and pointed out that the part they were being investigated for was interfered with by Verstappen in parc ferme.Why did Mercedes not use this as an excuse for the failure? I mean it's not inconceivable for a decent push on a moveable device, causing 600kg of car to move, to cause 0.2mm worth of permanent movement??
This was acknowledged, but ultimately discarded. Probably because a rear wing designed to take over a ton of load should be able to withstand Max having a bit of a prod at it without it becoming illegal....
Muzzer79 said:
IINM, Mercedes did try that angle and pointed out that the part they were being investigated for was interfered with by Verstappen in parc ferme.
This was acknowledged, but ultimately discarded. Probably because a rear wing designed to take over a ton of load should be able to withstand Max having a bit of a prod at it without it becoming illegal....
It's only designed to be strong enough in the directions necessary, and Max was pushing it in the opposite direction to the normal aerodynamic loading.This was acknowledged, but ultimately discarded. Probably because a rear wing designed to take over a ton of load should be able to withstand Max having a bit of a prod at it without it becoming illegal....
AllyBassman said:
- wrong in your opinion.
X wings - Safety grounds were used as an excuse - but lets be honest.. nobody wants those ugly things on cars!
DAS - very clever, but nip it in the bud to stop the price of development for other teams / a potential safety element of steering columns collapsing / steering wheels coming off on the hanger straight
Application flexibility of the rules is where most people have issues with, these are usually covered by the sporting regulations, not the technical regulations.
Based on your last sentence, you are not an engineer. Every F1 car steering wheel comes off by design, even your road car has steering columns that move, often in more than one plain, they are also designed to collapse.
AllyBassman said:
- wrong in your opinion.
X wings - Safety grounds were used as an excuse - but lets be honest.. nobody wants those ugly things on cars!
DAS - very clever, but nip it in the bud to stop the price of development for other teams / a potential safety element of steering columns collapsing / steering wheels coming off on the hanger straight
An example of undermining the intent of the rules would require a development that achieves a result that the rules in question already existed specifically to prevent. That wasn't the case with DAS.
jsf said:
I spend my life working with the rules set by the FIA, there is no spirit of the rules, only what the rules say and abiding by those rules as they are written. Every year the rules expand because the engineers find a way to interpret them which is legal, but not the intent of the governing body. Intent doesn't matter, what matters is the text of the rule.
Application flexibility of the rules is where most people have issues with, these are usually covered by the sporting regulations, not the technical regulations.
Based on your last sentence, you are not an engineer. Every F1 car steering wheel comes off by design, even your road car has steering columns that move, often in more than one plain, they are also designed to collapse.
Again, missing my points.Application flexibility of the rules is where most people have issues with, these are usually covered by the sporting regulations, not the technical regulations.
Based on your last sentence, you are not an engineer. Every F1 car steering wheel comes off by design, even your road car has steering columns that move, often in more than one plain, they are also designed to collapse.
I'm no engineer (is that a stipulation of posting here or having an opinion?) my example was merely in jest as an example of pushing the limits of a DAS type system too far and causing a failure. I do, however know that the steering wheels come off by design! I think anyone watching F1 or most motorsports knows that.
We will have to disagree on this, you work within the rules set by the FIA, i'm guessing you do not set those rules? I appreciate your input, but I do still believe there is a human element of rules being set / altered for the good of the sport, teams and competitors. Not just an engineering one.
AllyBassman said:
Again, missing my points.
I'm no engineer (is that a stipulation of posting here or having an opinion?) my example was merely in jest as an example of pushing the limits of a DAS type system too far and causing a failure. I do, however know that the steering wheels come off by design! I think anyone watching F1 or most motorsports knows that.
We will have to disagree on this, you work within the rules set by the FIA, i'm guessing you do not set those rules? I appreciate your input, but I do still believe there is a human element of rules being set / altered for the good of the sport, teams and competitors. Not just an engineering one.
Of course you don't need to be an engineer to have an opinion, that would give us a dull world if that were the case. If you think the engineers are going to create a system that is fundamentally unsafe in this era of racing, especially in high level F1, that's going too far. Steering systems like DAS are actually quite a simple thing to achieve, the clever bit is thinking of it in the first place and making sure it meets the letter of the rules whilst also making sure your competitors don't find out about it until you introduce it.I'm no engineer (is that a stipulation of posting here or having an opinion?) my example was merely in jest as an example of pushing the limits of a DAS type system too far and causing a failure. I do, however know that the steering wheels come off by design! I think anyone watching F1 or most motorsports knows that.
We will have to disagree on this, you work within the rules set by the FIA, i'm guessing you do not set those rules? I appreciate your input, but I do still believe there is a human element of rules being set / altered for the good of the sport, teams and competitors. Not just an engineering one.
I've worked on both sides of the game, i used to write sporting and technical regulations for a series and scrutineered the cars, I've also helped draft some rules now in the FIA rulebook when the engineers were asked for input to help police a practice that was going on that was technically legal, but wasn't what the FIA wanted to see when out on track. It's often the way the rules are created, where rule makers ask for a consensus on how to police something out on the track that in a static form is legal. This is where the technical directives come from.
You are very much wrong about the spirit of the rules being a thing, the scrutineers do a black and white task of testing and checking the cars meet the rules as they are written, if the car fails these tests, the administrators get involved. What often happens if the cars are meeting the rules as written, but the outcome isn't what the rule makers want, is they change the rules to be more specific or they introduce a TD to test in the way that ends the practice. Those new rules are then enforced in exactly the same way, by the letter of the rule, not the intent or spirit.
The issues usually come from politics outside the technical sphere, the classic example being what we saw last weekend, where a sporting rule was not followed, the other classics are the shenanigans that goes on in closed door hearings back in Paris or Switzerland where you are often left baffled (or know exactly what the game is) by the decisions. This aspect has been massively improved under Jean Todt compared to the era of Mosley and Balestre.
TheDeuce said:
DAS wasn't against the spirit of the rules at all though. It was simply something Merc were clever enough to think about that the FIA hadn't even considered. As such, it's not against the spirit/intent of any rule at all. The rules already allow for toe adjustment, which is all that DAS was. It's just that Merc found a way of making that adjustment dynamic, and the FIA concluded that was fully legal but not a useful direction to allow all teams to develop - probably as you say, due to cost. I don't buy the safety argument at all.
An example of undermining the intent of the rules would require a development that achieves a result that the rules in question already existed specifically to prevent. That wasn't the case with DAS.
DAS was like the ‘F-duct”, double diffuser, and numerous other inventions we’ve seen over the years - product of a team of people with big brains, told to go and find things that aren’t written in the rule book. An example of undermining the intent of the rules would require a development that achieves a result that the rules in question already existed specifically to prevent. That wasn't the case with DAS.
The universal opinion in the paddock for the first test, what that everyone else simply wished they’d thought of it first!
Sandpit Steve said:
DAS was like the ‘F-duct”, double diffuser, and numerous other inventions we’ve seen over the years - product of a team of people with big brains, told to go and find things that aren’t written in the rule book.
Yup, DAS was absolutely 100% legal in the year it was introduced because there was nothing banning it. The fact it got banned the next year because the rules changed doesn't have any bearing on that. In a way Mercedes made a mistake, there. Had they waited a few races to see the relative performance of the teams, they could have decided not to use DAS at all last season (and still comfortably won the championship) then introduced it [i]this[i/] year when things are much closer to give them an edge.
Edited by kambites on Thursday 18th November 19:21
kambites said:
Yup, DAS was absolutely 100% legal in the year it was introduced because there was nothing banning it. The fact it got banned the next year because the rules changed doesn't have any bearing on that.
In a way Mercedes made a mistake, there. Had they waited a few races to see the relative performance of the teams, they could have decided not to use DAS at all last season (and still comfortably won the championship) then introduced it [i]this[i/] year when things are much closer to give them an edge.
Not when last years rules car spec was frozen apart from a few areas.In a way Mercedes made a mistake, there. Had they waited a few races to see the relative performance of the teams, they could have decided not to use DAS at all last season (and still comfortably won the championship) then introduced it [i]this[i/] year when things are much closer to give them an edge.
Edited by kambites on Thursday 18th November 19:21
jsf said:
kambites said:
Unfortunately for them, those few areas have turned out to be rather important.
As was the intent of the change.CoolHands said:
Why don’t they just make the load testing rules more severe to stop flexing eg instead of say withstanding 100kg static load at the moment (or whatever it is) they up it to 150kg etc.
Because they can't impose a load on the wing in excess of it's design parameters. Remember the current test load is applied on a small part of the wing, and in terms of the wing deflection it has to represent close to what real world pressure would be upon that same small part of the wing.If you suddenly added 50% to that test then they would need to make far stronger and heavier wings simply to pass the test, but for no real world benefit out on track.
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