Are Red bull cheating?
Discussion
PhilAsia said:
Forester1965 said:
Either accept you're watching a manipulated entertainment show with limited sporting integrity or ditch it and do something else.
Why should we accept it? So that people that seemingly condone/laud cheating, like honda, can enjoy F1WWE? You are correct in that it is getting more accepted to have no sporting integrity, primarily led by a toxic taurine-fuelled drinks company that has no marque in the automobile industry to consider. But F1 will end up with a maga-type fanbase, with stupidity as its lowest common denominator. Will MB, McL, AM and, to a lesser extent, Ferrari, still be interested then?
TBF you make all the right arguments for not continuing to watch though, and the bias is getting more in favour of ditching the b
ks permanently!It makes the efforts of all the team members a trivial insignificance, not the pinnacle they aspire to.
You accept it because you don't have a choice. The owners and the corporates now own F1. It's an entertainment business with cars. It's theirs, not ours.
It was bent in the old days, too. Mustn't forget that. If you weren't flavour of the month with Balestre or Max/Bernie you were at risk. Remember back then, though, these things would rumble on and even end up in the courts because the people founded and owned teams to win on the track. They spent every penny they could get their grubby hands on in that pursuit and had nothing left at the end. F1 was about being the fastest race driver and team in the fastest race series.
I'm afraid now it's about building the highest value asset you can whilst profiting from a marketing machine. The model is totally different. It ultimately leads to spec cars racing around spec locations.
Look at the price cap, for example. How was that
justified? It was on the basis teams were spending an unustainable amount on development of new things. The regs were increasingly restricted on the basis it prevented spending wars. We were told if the spending wasn't halted the teams could no longer continue.
A spending cap was introduced. The top teams lost 2/3s or so of their budget. Were the regs then opened up? Surely they no longer need to be as tight because the cap prevents runaway spending. True innovation can than flourish. Of course they weren't.
They continue to be tightened. Why? The budget cap wasn't to prevent runaway spending. It was to make F1 even cheaper for incumbents and especially incoming investors, sorry, team owners. The budget cap gives an immediate and sustained boost to the balance sheet value of every team. You're no longer buying an asset with an open ended cost base. It's fixed by regulation. Liberty then control the market value of the teams and wider sport by limiting availability on the grid. Hence Andretti can't get on it.
The pitch to the corporate world is an F1 team offers a marketing machine generating more in exposure and sales than it costs in operation (see Mercedes in the Wolff era). Unheard of. Access to the opportunity is restricted to buying an incumbent, and there are only 10 of them in the world. This massively increases the value of each team. For example Red Bull have probably got £4bn worth of teams on the grid. It cost them an absolute fraction of that to create and look at the marketing exposure from it, when all their other marketing activities actually cost them money rather than make it.
All which is why nobody- Liberty, the FIA, the teams or the people employed by or sponsoring them and especially the team owners, are really going to do anything that jeopardises the value of those assets. There is a huge financial shock to ANY business where an asset on your balance sheet goes from being worth £1bn to half that because it's tainted. The boards at Mercedes, Ferrari, Renault, Red Bull, Dorilton, VAG, Mumtalakat, Gene Haas or Lawrence Stroll are not going to take a multi billion dollar balance sheet hit to give some ungrateful driver they have to pay $30m a year another tick in their stats. So bloody what! They're in it to make money not win at sport.
It was bent in the old days, too. Mustn't forget that. If you weren't flavour of the month with Balestre or Max/Bernie you were at risk. Remember back then, though, these things would rumble on and even end up in the courts because the people founded and owned teams to win on the track. They spent every penny they could get their grubby hands on in that pursuit and had nothing left at the end. F1 was about being the fastest race driver and team in the fastest race series.
I'm afraid now it's about building the highest value asset you can whilst profiting from a marketing machine. The model is totally different. It ultimately leads to spec cars racing around spec locations.
Look at the price cap, for example. How was that
justified? It was on the basis teams were spending an unustainable amount on development of new things. The regs were increasingly restricted on the basis it prevented spending wars. We were told if the spending wasn't halted the teams could no longer continue.
A spending cap was introduced. The top teams lost 2/3s or so of their budget. Were the regs then opened up? Surely they no longer need to be as tight because the cap prevents runaway spending. True innovation can than flourish. Of course they weren't.
They continue to be tightened. Why? The budget cap wasn't to prevent runaway spending. It was to make F1 even cheaper for incumbents and especially incoming investors, sorry, team owners. The budget cap gives an immediate and sustained boost to the balance sheet value of every team. You're no longer buying an asset with an open ended cost base. It's fixed by regulation. Liberty then control the market value of the teams and wider sport by limiting availability on the grid. Hence Andretti can't get on it.
The pitch to the corporate world is an F1 team offers a marketing machine generating more in exposure and sales than it costs in operation (see Mercedes in the Wolff era). Unheard of. Access to the opportunity is restricted to buying an incumbent, and there are only 10 of them in the world. This massively increases the value of each team. For example Red Bull have probably got £4bn worth of teams on the grid. It cost them an absolute fraction of that to create and look at the marketing exposure from it, when all their other marketing activities actually cost them money rather than make it.
All which is why nobody- Liberty, the FIA, the teams or the people employed by or sponsoring them and especially the team owners, are really going to do anything that jeopardises the value of those assets. There is a huge financial shock to ANY business where an asset on your balance sheet goes from being worth £1bn to half that because it's tainted. The boards at Mercedes, Ferrari, Renault, Red Bull, Dorilton, VAG, Mumtalakat, Gene Haas or Lawrence Stroll are not going to take a multi billion dollar balance sheet hit to give some ungrateful driver they have to pay $30m a year another tick in their stats. So bloody what! They're in it to make money not win at sport.
honda_exige said:
MarkwG said:
lambosagogo said:
So really what this boils down to is that every team has a way of adjusting the bib height of their car. While most teams do this in a way that would be obvious, Red Bull put in a device to allow them to adjust it easily and did so in a place where it wouldn’t necessarily be easy for a scrutineer to spot it in parc ferme when engineers will often be working around that location.
Is that the basic summmary?
...which has the potential to allow adjustments outside parc ferme rules, unlike the other teams where any adjustments would be very obvious; which has lead to suspicions that's what they've been doing. Since they have a history whiter than the finest Persil hot wash, I can't imagine why anyone would have those suspicions, but there you go...Is that the basic summmary?
The FIA have all the footage from the CCTV this year from the cameras directly over the car. It's fairly trivial to go back and review.As other people have said why would design this in such a way if it did not have a purpose.
But it is RB and yet another tainted championship is on the cards for them, crazy really.
Stealthracer said:
I'm beginning to wonder if any of their championships have been won fairly.
It's impossible to know, unless you're Christian Horner - and his definition of 'fair' is highly questionable!One problem is that we don't even know how long certain 'cheats' were in use for. That's not helped by the fact the FIA seem to prefer to make certain things stop by coming to some sort of deal with the team, rather than actually carrying out a full investigation, I imagine that's because they don't want to open a big can of worms and have to consider awkward questions such as the validity of past seasons titles...
How long did they have the brake bias cheat in use for? For how many seasons have they been happily adjusting their cars front bib height against parc ferme restrictions? We don't know because the FIA haven't dug up those answers, because they really, really don't want those questions answering.
WPA said:
honda_exige said:
MarkwG said:
lambosagogo said:
So really what this boils down to is that every team has a way of adjusting the bib height of their car. While most teams do this in a way that would be obvious, Red Bull put in a device to allow them to adjust it easily and did so in a place where it wouldn’t necessarily be easy for a scrutineer to spot it in parc ferme when engineers will often be working around that location.
Is that the basic summmary?
...which has the potential to allow adjustments outside parc ferme rules, unlike the other teams where any adjustments would be very obvious; which has lead to suspicions that's what they've been doing. Since they have a history whiter than the finest Persil hot wash, I can't imagine why anyone would have those suspicions, but there you go...Is that the basic summmary?
The FIA have all the footage from the CCTV this year from the cameras directly over the car. It's fairly trivial to go back and review.As other people have said why would design this in such a way if it did not have a purpose.
But it is RB and yet another tainted championship is on the cards for them, crazy really.
It's quite simple to me really. If they way the adjust it is so obvious that it would be impossible to hide if done in parc ferme, there should then be plenty of video evidence of it being adjusted legally in the garages!
confucuis said:
It's quite simple to me really. If they way the adjust it is so obvious that it would be impossible to hide if done in parc ferme, there should then be plenty of video evidence of it being adjusted legally in the garages!
And yet the FIA are not bothering to look at the CCTV... Why not?Teatowell said:
Jasandjules said:
And yet the FIA are not bothering to look at the CCTV... Why not?
Why would they, all sorts of things go on in parc ferme. You think they’re using cctv to pick up millimetres of floor movement?Why would they want to fully investigate? There's a real risk such an investigation could uncover actual usage of the device and would invalidate previous sporting results.
The reality is, the FIA will avoid that at all costs.
Teatowell said:
Jasandjules said:
And yet the FIA are not bothering to look at the CCTV... Why not?
Why would they, all sorts of things go on in parc ferme. You think they’re using cctv to pick up millimetres of floor movement?thegreenhell said:
Teatowell said:
Jasandjules said:
And yet the FIA are not bothering to look at the CCTV... Why not?
Why would they, all sorts of things go on in parc ferme. You think they’re using cctv to pick up millimetres of floor movement?TheDeuce said:
Teatowell said:
Jasandjules said:
And yet the FIA are not bothering to look at the CCTV... Why not?
Why would they, all sorts of things go on in parc ferme. You think they’re using cctv to pick up millimetres of floor movement?Why would they want to fully investigate? There's a real risk such an investigation could uncover actual usage of the device and would invalidate previous sporting results.
The reality is, the FIA will avoid that at all costs.
When I saw the sky piece with Ted stood in front of the car and a mechanic with the long socket set I imagined the device was as simple as a sort of bolt through the floor pushing the front of the bib down.
Obviously I'm no F1 designer as that seems way too simple. When you look at the car the "bib" is a fair bit behind the front suspension:
Where the mechanic had the socket was almost inline with the top wishbones. The underneath of the car doesn't even look possibly adjustable until at least behind the lower wishbones.
Appreciate that that is the 23 car but pretty sure Horner said they'd had the same device for a number of years in one of the interviews I saw so does anyone know, is this adjuster a series of linkages to get from where the mechanics ratchet was back to move something over or near the start of the "bib"?
Or have i misunderstood and it drops the front suspension ride height?
Obviously I'm no F1 designer as that seems way too simple. When you look at the car the "bib" is a fair bit behind the front suspension:
Where the mechanic had the socket was almost inline with the top wishbones. The underneath of the car doesn't even look possibly adjustable until at least behind the lower wishbones.
Appreciate that that is the 23 car but pretty sure Horner said they'd had the same device for a number of years in one of the interviews I saw so does anyone know, is this adjuster a series of linkages to get from where the mechanics ratchet was back to move something over or near the start of the "bib"?
Or have i misunderstood and it drops the front suspension ride height?
The access panel they're using to get to the bib adjuster is the top of the footwell - typically used for adjusting pedals and other top secret componentry...
RB mentioned access was convoluted, removing panels, etc. a while ago - it's not as simple as a mechanic diving into the footwell head first with a spanner in his hand.
I would imagine people are currently pouring over recordings of the Red Bull garage between qualifying and the race trying to find the ratchet gun in use....
RB mentioned access was convoluted, removing panels, etc. a while ago - it's not as simple as a mechanic diving into the footwell head first with a spanner in his hand.
I would imagine people are currently pouring over recordings of the Red Bull garage between qualifying and the race trying to find the ratchet gun in use....
Teatowell said:
Jasandjules said:
And yet the FIA are not bothering to look at the CCTV... Why not?
Why would they, all sorts of things go on in parc ferme. You think they’re using cctv to pick up millimetres of floor movement?Putting those two factors together, what is the only logical conclusion?
chrisga said:
When I saw the sky piece with Ted stood in front of the car and a mechanic with the long socket set I imagined the device was as simple as a sort of bolt through the floor pushing the front of the bib down.
Obviously I'm no F1 designer as that seems way too simple. When you look at the car the "bib" is a fair bit behind the front suspension:
Toto makes a good point.Obviously I'm no F1 designer as that seems way too simple. When you look at the car the "bib" is a fair bit behind the front suspension:
https://www.crash.net/f1/news/1058551/1/toto-wolff...
"Why would you design such a thing and put two marks on it for two positions? Is that the precise decision-making in F1?"
Red Bull demonstrated why the device complied with regulations to FIA officials in full view of television cameras in Texas.
Wolff mocked their efforts: "I really like that when they put this real broom in the car to demonstrate that that is the only way of that getting changed! I wonder how long it took them to make this up, and to stick it in there."
Jasandjules said:
Teatowell said:
Jasandjules said:
And yet the FIA are not bothering to look at the CCTV... Why not?
Why would they, all sorts of things go on in parc ferme. You think they’re using cctv to pick up millimetres of floor movement?Putting those two factors together, what is the only logical conclusion?
I don't think the matter is fully closed as yet
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