ibsey wrote:mario wrote:thehemogoblin wrote:I'm really indifferent to it all. Isn't F1 supposed to be about innovation?
Agreed - given that the regulations are restrictive, there are complaints that the cars are too similar. However, once Newey comes up with something different, we get the predictable complaints that it is ugly, or that we are seeing innovation in the wrong areas and so on.
Personally, the actual function of the fin itself is quite interesting. In the case of most teams, such as Red Bull, the idea is that the fin redirects airflow over the wing during yaw (when the car turns), improving the efficiency of the wing. There is an interesting debate about the Mclaren engine fin, however - there is all sorts of speculation that the fin may have an alternative purpose (mostly revolving around using it as a duct to blow air through the gap between the wing elements, to prevent the airflow over the rear wings from detatching prematurely).
I'm afraid I have to agree with the above two comments. I don't care how beautiful the cars may appear today, I am not massively exitced or interested by today's F1 car designs, simply because they are all the same IMO. If you take away sponsorship & liveries & painted all the cars in black, I bet the average fan won't be able to tell a Red Bull from a Ferrari for instance.
Whereas I was interested in F1 car designs in the late 70's early 80's when F1 cars all seemed to differ to one other, & that made it another exicting aspect of F1. For example, some cars were turbo powered, some weren't. Some had front wings whereas some didn't, or the rear wings supports where different. Then we had, the Brabham fan car, or the Lotus 88 (the twin chassis one that got banned).
The fact that late 70's early 80's F1 cars were "ugly" in appearance really wasn't a big deal when you considered the better racing it produced & the extra interest it generated as a result (i.e amongst F1 fans in assessing the pros & cons of a particular car design). It was IMO another talking/debating point amongst F1 people as to where one design worked over another.
So If I had the choice between beautiful looking cars but no difference in designs. Or ugly looking cars but a difference in design (therefore a another talking point to consider). I would happiliy choose the latter.
To be honest, quite a few cars in the late 1970's were direct copies of each other. Take, for example, the following:
In fact, since cheating and copying was quite prevalent in the 70's and 80's, we know that many of the teams were simply copying each other's chassis designs (particularly throughout the ground effect era). One particularly good tale is as follows: after one poor practise session in 1981, Chapman was having an argument with both drivers over what was the problem (they were arguing about the rocker springs, dampers etc.).
When one of the other engineers intervened, Chapman told him to go out and measure up the Williams FW07. At first, this engineer laughed - at which point, Chapman said "Either you measure that car, or start looking for another job." Now, this engineer came across one of the FW07's, which has been recovered by the marshall's after Jones had spun off, and was waiting to be picked up by the Williams team. Dutifully, he masured the car's track and chassis, and duly returned, only for Chapman to complain that he hadn't measured the rear suspension. Back he trotted off to measure up the car, only to be caught by Jones whilst he was measuring up the car. After a brief altercation, Jones sent him on his way, having given him an earfull. At the following race, Jones then presented the Lotus engineer with a builder's rule, with the following warning on it - "You can use this, but don't get caught doing it again."
Equally, whilst the Brabham "fan car" or the Lotus 88 were innovative, they also had the major problem of being banned pretty quickly (in the case of the Lotus 88, that never even raced against it's rivals), so I wouldn't use them as the best examples. And whilst technical differences may have existed along the way, very quickly one particular design would dominate, much like today - turbos drove out the normally aspirated engines, wing cars soon beat non wing cars. Moving forwards to the early 1990's, the V10's drove out the Ferrari V12 and the Ford V8, and so forth.
As for beter racing, yes, perhaps, but equally you could say that in some ways the past seasons have been as repetitive as in recent years. As was pointed out when Button won the title with Brawn, that was the first time since 1978 (when Andretti won with Lotus) that the WDC and WCC went to somebody outside of Mclaren, Ferrari, Williams or Benetton/Renault.
Also, whilst you moan that all of the cars look the same these days, I would disagree with you. Taking a look at some of the technical forums, and seeing the pictures of the cars, you can see that whilst they may appear to be broadly the same, once you start looking at the details, you realise that they are all different in subtle ways.
