The FIA favours Ferrari?- Unthinkable!
Discussion
On the Autosport website today was a story about Ferrari's new tyre-heating boxes. These rigid metal boxes have been designed to help Ferrari address the problem that the Bridgestone tyre takes a while to come up to operating temperature, and F. qualifying times this year have been compromised as a result.
Each box has a spindle to which the wheel is fixed, so that no part of the tyre surface itself touches the heating elements that line the inside of the metal walls. The boxes were considered to be sufficiently important that they were designed by Rory Byrne himself.
Forum readers will recall that last month BAR were stripped of points, kept out of two races and put on probation because of their fuel-cell system. It seems that there was no dispute that the BAR system required the storage of "extra" fuel, without which it could not - or at least did not - function. BAR argued that, because their car demonstrably had never run under weight, it was legal. The FIA countered that, "Nooooo, the rule says that the car must weigh at least 600kg without any fuel, regardless of whether some of that fuel is [i]always[/i] on board."
In other words, what matters is a strict literal reading of the rules, regardless of their intent.
Back to Ferrari's trick tyre warmers:
It seems that Article 75F of F1's Sporting Regulations states, "The only permitted type of tyre heating devices are blankets wihch use resistive heating elements."
The [i]Autosport[/i] report continues: "...FIA technical delegate Charlie Whiting has inspected the boxes and declared them fully legal - because a box is simply a different way of housing the fully legal resistive heating elements that are found in blankets."
"One leading engineer told [i]Autosport-Atlas[/i],"If Ferrari are allowed to use this system then it seems strange, because it is clear that you can use only a blanket to heat the tyre and not a metal box."
One set of rules for nine teams and another set (or perhaps none at all) for the tenth? No, that is much too cynical.
Each box has a spindle to which the wheel is fixed, so that no part of the tyre surface itself touches the heating elements that line the inside of the metal walls. The boxes were considered to be sufficiently important that they were designed by Rory Byrne himself.
Forum readers will recall that last month BAR were stripped of points, kept out of two races and put on probation because of their fuel-cell system. It seems that there was no dispute that the BAR system required the storage of "extra" fuel, without which it could not - or at least did not - function. BAR argued that, because their car demonstrably had never run under weight, it was legal. The FIA countered that, "Nooooo, the rule says that the car must weigh at least 600kg without any fuel, regardless of whether some of that fuel is [i]always[/i] on board."
In other words, what matters is a strict literal reading of the rules, regardless of their intent.
Back to Ferrari's trick tyre warmers:
It seems that Article 75F of F1's Sporting Regulations states, "The only permitted type of tyre heating devices are blankets wihch use resistive heating elements."
The [i]Autosport[/i] report continues: "...FIA technical delegate Charlie Whiting has inspected the boxes and declared them fully legal - because a box is simply a different way of housing the fully legal resistive heating elements that are found in blankets."
"One leading engineer told [i]Autosport-Atlas[/i],"If Ferrari are allowed to use this system then it seems strange, because it is clear that you can use only a blanket to heat the tyre and not a metal box."
One set of rules for nine teams and another set (or perhaps none at all) for the tenth? No, that is much too cynical.
pib said:It was reported broadly at the time that all the teams use fuel cells with internal collector systems to ensure constant pressure.
I could be wrong but I thought part of BARS problems was also having a device inside the fuel cell that held fuel . . . I thought that alone was a violation.
The collector in the BAR tank had about four times the capacity of the other teams', leading to the suspicion that the extra capacity was sometimes run when exhausted, enabling the car to run light on the final laps of early stints.
BAR then demonstrated through its telemetric data that there was never an instant during the race when the car had been below the 600 kg minimum. The FIA ruled that BAR had nonetheless broken the rules, simply because, by emptying the fuel to the last drop, it was possible to get the car's weight below minimum. The said it mattered not whether BAR had actually done so.
I'm not taking a stand in favour of or against a strict literal interpretation of the rules - I don't think many of us care one way or the other. If the Autosport article is accurate, however, this is yet another example of what seems glaringly to be a double standard.
Irrespective of whether the FIA has in seasons past favoured Ferrari, Benetton or any other team, the new, pre-emptive Concorde Agreement quite clearly creates a conflict of interest. It would take very principled men indeed at both the FIA and Ferrari for them not to be helping each other out now.
If the GPWC were to succeed, Bernie's operation might or might not become toast, depending on whether he managed to get a piece of that new bit of action.
What by definition would be toast would be the FIA's control over the world's premier racing series. It is well known that many of the team principals detest Oswald Junior. Even if he personally were out of the picture, there is no way that the teams would go to the massive trouble and expense of creating their own series simply to allow it to be controlled by a handful of petty bureaucratic dictators in Paris. GPWC would only exist outside the FIA.
The FIA owes Ferrari big - as in LARGE - because the latter signed up with Bernie and it to the new CA. Max and Bernie obviously concluded that their best shot to maintain control would be to get Ferrari to commit to them, and that that should force the hands of the other nine teams. For the FIA to continue to reign, Ferrari must be tied into Bernie and itself. To make that commitment, Ferrari required compensation, and it would be extraordinary if that compensation were limited to a monetary payment.
If the GPWC were to succeed, Bernie's operation might or might not become toast, depending on whether he managed to get a piece of that new bit of action.
What by definition would be toast would be the FIA's control over the world's premier racing series. It is well known that many of the team principals detest Oswald Junior. Even if he personally were out of the picture, there is no way that the teams would go to the massive trouble and expense of creating their own series simply to allow it to be controlled by a handful of petty bureaucratic dictators in Paris. GPWC would only exist outside the FIA.
The FIA owes Ferrari big - as in LARGE - because the latter signed up with Bernie and it to the new CA. Max and Bernie obviously concluded that their best shot to maintain control would be to get Ferrari to commit to them, and that that should force the hands of the other nine teams. For the FIA to continue to reign, Ferrari must be tied into Bernie and itself. To make that commitment, Ferrari required compensation, and it would be extraordinary if that compensation were limited to a monetary payment.
LongQ said:I used to think that Formula One teams and the related fellow-travellers were the most self-indulgent, smallest bang-for-the-buck people around.
That will be another support truck each then?
Then on the radio the other day I heard that the road show paraphernalia for U-2 requires 69 lorries. FFS!
rubystone said:It can't be denied that Ferrari have done a fantastic job in the last several years. They've made the best cars, been the best prepared and have often devised the best race strategies.
Ferrari are great at thinking out of the box and once again have done so here.
It has to be said, however, that a lot of other teams have thought out of the box and been creative, only for their creations to be banned after they had been given preliminary approval by the FIA. This would include Williams with the CVT, McLaren with the torque-bias diff and fiddle-brake, and BAR with the mechanical brake-steer device.
rubystone said:Fine, but assuming that the Autosport account is accurate, how can one reconcile insisting on the letter of the law regarding dry weight but letting it slide regarding tyre blankets?
Finally, BAR's problem was that the parc ferme rules require the weighing of a car DRY - i.e. empty of ALL fluids. They submitted the car with the collector full of 6 kgs of fuel....I can't see any problem in the ruling on their car, only that the stewards failed to act according to the letter of the law.
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