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The 2023 Formula One Season

It’s always a matter of working your way around the rule book, whether you’re in the 24 Hour Citröen 2CV race, Le Mans or F1. And if you don’t do it, you’ll be at the back.

The cars are close. Very close at some circuits. When you remember that the only parts the cars have in common are the tyres, it can be quite surprising to see that the top ten might qualify within well under a second of each other, and that difference is partly due to the nut behind the steering wheel. So you have ten teams designing their cars from the ground up, within the rules but with a fair amount of aero and chassis freedom, independent of each other, and in the time it takes to say “Jim Clark was Great” the whole field of twenty cars could have passed you by and be braking for turn one.
Yes, Red Bull have a supremely talented aerodynamicist, and if he ekes out a few tenths of a percent of lap time here and there, he’s worth his money, done his job.
Are the budget cap rules flawless? No. But Ferrari spending multiples of the mid-field team budgets was deeply flawed too.

I suppose we should just ask ourselves what is F1 about. For me, it should be about a team, and I stress ‘team’, showing what it can do.
 
@IanW ’s summary above is somewhat depressing.

For me the whole point of F1 is to be a platform for innovation and a breeding ground for new talent. It’s meant to create new ways of engineering things better, in a way that can be applied to other applications (automotive or otherwise).

The fact that it’s a sport makes it fun - and fun drives creativity in different ways to more prosaic industries. That made us all marvel at the spectacle when Lotus did crazy stuff with aerodynamics, Renault applied turbocharging etc. etc.

Today F1 should have the brightest minds looking at battery technology (the most obvious example?) with outcomes benefiting applications worldwide.

F1 shouldn’t sit in a vacuum, which is what the current regulations seem to be causing.
 
Tony Lockhart said:
It’s always a matter of working your way around the rule book, whether you’re in the 24 Hour Citröen 2CV race, Le Mans or F1. And if you don’t do it, you’ll be at the back.

The cars are close. Very close at some circuits. When you remember that the only parts the cars have in common are the tyres, it can be quite surprising to see that the top ten might qualify within well under a second of each other, and that difference is partly due to the nut behind the steering wheel. So you have ten teams designing their cars from the ground up, within the rules but with a fair amount of aero and chassis freedom, independent of each other, and in the time it takes to say “Jim Clark was Great” the whole field of twenty cars could have passed you by and be braking for turn one.
Yes, Red Bull have a supremely talented aerodynamicist, and if he ekes out a few tenths of a percent of lap time here and there, he’s worth his money, done his job.
Are the budget cap rules flawless? No. But Ferrari spending multiples of the mid-field team budgets was deeply flawed too.

I suppose we should just ask ourselves what is F1 about. For me, it should be about a team, and I stress ‘team’, showing what it can do.
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Agreed, it would be ideal to find a way for the teams to compete on a fairly level basis to encourage closer racing, but at the same time it can't be too tightly restricted into a single chassis or single engine formula.

The teams have and will always find every way to push the rules as far as possible, and such innovation is great but also very difficult to police. I guess the governing body have an enormously difficult balancing act in terms of regulations and restrictions, and they also have many and varied interested parties shouting at them, whom all need to be appeased in some way.

Looking back on it now, I suppose I can begin to grudgingly admit to the very tiniest outside possibility that the 2000-2004 Ferrari combination of Rory Byrne, Ross Brawn, Jean Todt, Michael Schumacher, a compliant team mate, a compliant FIA, an essentially unlimited budget and sole development and use of the best engine and tyres on the grid could have been viewed as a bit of an unfair challenge for the other teams.

As a scuderia fan since Villeneuve joined them when I was 7, I thoroughly enjoyed it at the time of course, but it marked a change in the level of dominance that could be achieved. Up until then the teams had all waxed and waned for a year or two, and individual drivers or a single technical innovation could make radical differences - mid/rear-mounted engines, the DFV, wings, skirts, fans, ultra-reliable flat 12's, Lotus 78 & 79, turbos, traction control & active ride, Jim Clark etc. etc.
We still see period where teams are strongly dominant for longer periods as with McLaren then Mercedes recently and Red Bull currently, and while the quali lap times are closer, it's still not uncommon for the winning margin to be half a minute or more. Certainly a tricky problem.
 
Whaleblue said:
It’s meant to create new ways of engineering things better, in a way that can be applied to other applications (automotive or otherwise).
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I don't think that it is meant to be this at all. It comes down to the fact that mankind has always raced its forms of transport. And, in order to do so, it has modified it - think of the Roman chariot races that used lightweight chariots. When the snowmobile was invented, purely as a means of over-snow transport, it wasn't long before people started racing them and then modifying them. The original Le Mans racers were normal production cars - the Bentley Boys used to drive their cars to the circuit, complete with Fortnum and Masons hampers, race them, and then drive them home again. If I recall correctly, they were even required to complete part of the race with the soft top erected. But any resemblance between a modern Le Mans racer and a normal road car is very remote.

I don't think (and I'm happy to be corrected) that motor racing has ever contributed a single everyday useful idea of its own. What it has done is taken ideas and modified them and improved them, such that the developments could be useful in normal vehicles. Disc brakes were known from aircraft practice, but it was Jaguar's idea to use them in its Le Mans-winning cars, so that they didn't have to tiptoe around nervously in the final hours, trying desperately to preserve some braking. The turbocharger was invented by Sulzer in Switzerland before the First World War for use in an aircraft engine, but racing helped bring it into the mainstream of road car development.

Much of what F1 develops is not useful in normal cars. Its suspension ideas are useless, unless you want all your fillings knocked out within a few hundred metres (especially on UK roads!). And not many of us are going to reach such speeds that its aerodynamic ideas become useful!

Let's just accept it as it is, a part of the entertainment industry, whose overlords are desperately trying to come up with ideas to make it more entertaining.
 
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@tones I take your points.

Perhaps I should have said that a lot of the “innovations” are/were in developing ideas as much as being truly innovative. I should also be clear that I see it as an entertainment in and of itself, otherwise I’d not watch it, but merely read about the developments!

I stand by the essence of what I said about the current setup stifling creativity from great minds.
 
Whaleblue said:
@tones I take your points.

Perhaps I should have said that a lot of the “innovations” are/were in developing ideas as much as being truly innovative. I should also be clear that I see it as an entertainment in and of itself, otherwise I’d not watch it, but merely read about the developments!

I stand by the essence of what I said about the current setup stifling creativity from great minds.
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The silly thing is, if you allow teams to have a lot more freedom, the leading two cars could well end up seconds per lap faster, leading to an even ‘worse’ situation than we are seeing at Suzuka today.
 
Perhaps we need to go back to a point where the cars all have way too much power for any situation, and it just comes down to how the driver manages it and if they can keep it on the island.
Not seriously of course, because we’d end up with every circuit having Paul Ricard style runoff’s, but it would be nice to see and hear those 3 litre V10’s again.
 
Graham B said:
Agreed, it would be ideal to find a way for the teams to compete on a fairly level basis to encourage closer racing, but at the same time it can't be too tightly restricted into a single chassis or single engine formula.

The teams have and will always find every way to push the rules as far as possible, and such innovation is great but also very difficult to police. I guess the governing body have an enormously difficult balancing act in terms of regulations and restrictions, and they also have many and varied interested parties shouting at them, whom all need to be appeased in some way.

Looking back on it now, I suppose I can begin to grudgingly admit to the very tiniest outside possibility that the 2000-2004 Ferrari combination of Rory Byrne, Ross Brawn, Jean Todt, Michael Schumacher, a compliant team mate, a compliant FIA, an essentially unlimited budget and sole development and use of the best engine and tyres on the grid could have been viewed as a bit of an unfair challenge for the other teams.

As a scuderia fan since Villeneuve joined them when I was 7, I thoroughly enjoyed it at the time of course, but it marked a change in the level of dominance that could be achieved. Up until then the teams had all waxed and waned for a year or two, and individual drivers or a single technical innovation could make radical differences - mid/rear-mounted engines, the DFV, wings, skirts, fans, ultra-reliable flat 12's, Lotus 78 & 79, turbos, traction control & active ride, Jim Clark etc. etc.
We still see period where teams are strongly dominant for longer periods as with McLaren then Mercedes recently and Red Bull currently, and while the quali lap times are closer, it's still not uncommon for the winning margin to be half a minute or more. Certainly a tricky problem.
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Don't forget the Ferrari "special payments" giving them more money from the FIA than any other team, just for turning up regardless of where they finished.
 
Graham B said:
Perhaps we need to go back to a point where the cars all have way too much power for any situation, and it just comes down to how the driver manages it and if they can keep it on the island.
Not seriously of course, because we’d end up with every circuit having Paul Ricard style runoff’s, but it would be nice to see and hear those 3 litre V10’s again.
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Any formula race engine of any configuration that doesn’t have a turbo would be a good start, or if it does have a turbo, no other energy recovery bollox in the exhaust making it sound plain crap.

My post earlier about freeing up testing but maintaining the budget cap could work with freeing up the regs a bit in general I suppose.
 
Tony Lockhart said:
Any formula race engine of any configuration that doesn’t have a turbo would be a good start, or if it does have a turbo, no other energy recovery bollox in the exhaust making it sound plain crap.

My post earlier about freeing up testing but maintaining the budget cap could work with freeing up the regs a bit in general I suppose.
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Sound is just energy going to waste (I know you know this). It was brought home to me my first trip to the Festival of Speed when all the older cars made a phenomenal racket and they got quieter as they got newer with better and more efficient engines especially when electronic fuel injection came in.
 
cutting42 said:
Sound is just energy going to waste (I know you know this). It was brought home to me my first trip to the Festival of Speed when all the older cars made a phenomenal racket and they got quieter as they got newer with better and more efficient engines especially when electronic fuel injection came in.
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And quiet cars and motorbikes have no appeal for me. I only got to Brands Hatch a couple of times a year now, mainly because modern race cars, as a rule, sound flat and boring. They’re probably using 4,000 to 6,000rpm (at a guess) and then the sound is killed by an obstruction. I’m not going to criticise the tech advances, I’m just not going to give up a Sunday, £30 in fuel, £25-45 for a ticket, and others costs, to stand there wondering why I bothered.

But then there really are people who, so I’ve heard, actually pay for a ticket to watch Formula E! Seriously!

When car engines produce no excitement, the last resort is artificial close racing. That means hobbling better teams and drivers. Sod that. I’ll stay at home and watch YouTube instead.
 
IanW said:
The wind tunnel / CFD limitations were brought in quite a few years ago to limit the rate of lap time reduction. This was then extended so that the amount of wind tunnel time was calculated based on the teams finishing position in the constructors championship (first gets least and last gets the most).
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I understand (from a brief chat to someone who knows, if I'm wrong it's down to me) that wind tunnel time is monitored by, in essence, looking at the team's electricity bills. And there aren't a lot of suitable installations scattered around the world you could use to get some work done in sufficiently off the books to not get found out. But the CFD regulations assume decades old cluster-of-server arrangements and monitoring logs to control runs. I can run a relatively cheap GPU setup in my back room independently for a very modest (especially in F1 petty cash terms) budget and pursue all sorts of ideas. If those ideas were not directly related to the current car design I think it would even be within the spirit of the regulations. You could imagine Mercedes providing a couple of smart people in a garage with the mesh for last years car and paying a few hundred thousand for a design review, an independent search for where they went wrong and how the car could have been developed.

I'm probably underestimating the smartness of the FIA...

This weekend's Red Bull interest looks like mostly being about how badly Perez will perform, and I expect a thoroughly entertaining race for second. I think Max's outright advantage is back.
 
Tony Lockhart said:
And quiet cars and motorbikes have no appeal for me. I only got to Brands Hatch a couple of times a year now, mainly because modern race cars, as a rule, sound flat and boring. They’re probably using 4,000 to 6,000rpm (at a guess) and then the sound is killed by an obstruction. I’m not going to criticise the tech advances, I’m just not going to give up a Sunday, £30 in fuel, £25-45 for a ticket, and others costs, to stand there wondering why I bothered.

But then there really are people who, so I’ve heard, actually pay for a ticket to watch Formula E! Seriously!

When car engines produce no excitement, the last resort is artificial close racing. That means hobbling better teams and drivers. Sod that. I’ll stay at home and watch YouTube instead.
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I get it completely, my live motorsport attendance has dropped to nearly non existent now.

The sport actually faces a crisis for traditional fans, we want the full experience the sounds, smells and dodgy burgers as well as meaningful competition. Craning for a view on the first lap, the thrill as the pack howls past is definitely a big part and my visit to the Indy 500 last year gave all that but the actual racing left me pretty cold as it is artificial with spec cars, almost spec engines and overtaking dominated by drafting. The closing up of the field regularly through specious yellow flag periods also does nothing for me.

I am not quite sure what I want ultimately. Sounds are important but I need to feel it is strived for, that it has some purpose other than just a created race series. I have never been interested in F2/3 FF etc as they are just training grounds for F1 to me. I enjoyed BTCC in its heyday because it allowed teams to innovate within a set of rules but as soon as it went to spec engines and race chassis with a manufacturers bodyshell I have lost interest.
 
I'm somewhat confused by everyone's stance here.

On the one hand you want F1 to be about innovation, leading edge design, the pinnacle of race car tech etc. so argue for the technical regulations to be opened up some more.

On the other hand you hanker back to the days of noisy engines, no turbos, no energy recovery etc. Well sorry, but these things are the innovations, the leading edge, the pinnacle.

Whether we (as luddites) like it or not the days of the ICE are just about over and as such cutting edge motorsport needs to move with the times.

I still love the 50s and 60s cars (that's why I head off to the likes of the Revival), but I totally get that F1 moved on very quickly during the 70s and 80s... and rightfully so. All we are seeing now is that evolution and innovation continuing. A few generations time will look back on the ICE as an anachronism just as we do the horse and carriage and the early stream powered cars of the late 19th century.
 
tiggers said:
I'm somewhat confused by everyone's stance here.

On the one hand you want F1 to be about innovation, leading edge design, the pinnacle of race car tech etc. so argue for the technical regulations to be opened up some more.

On the other hand you hanker back to the days of noisy engines, no turbos, no energy recovery etc. Well sorry, but these things are the innovations, the leading edge, the pinnacle.

Whether we (as luddites) like it or not the days of the ICE are just about over and as such cutting edge motorsport needs to move with the times.

I still love the 50s and 60s cars (that's why I head off to the likes of the Revival), but I totally get that F1 moved on very quickly during the 70s and 80s... and rightfully so. All we are seeing now is that evolution and innovation continuing. A few generations time will look back on the ICE as an anachronism just as we do the horse and carriage and the early stream powered cars of the late 19th century.
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Yup, I am conflicted for sure. I am probably less demotivated by the (lack of) noise than Tony and am still enjoying F1 and for me innovation is critical. However it is changing focus into a much more mainstream audience where personality and branding are the kings. I fear that we will go more and more spec to satisfy equality of competition then we will lose that innovation.
 
cutting42 said:
Yup, I am conflicted for sure. I am probably less demotivated by the (lack of) noise than Tony and am still enjoying F1 and for me innovation is critical. However it is changing focus into a much more mainstream audience where personality and branding are the kings. I fear that we will go more and more spec to satisfy equality of competition then we will lose that innovation.
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I think this is spot-on. What was previously a minor sport for enthusiasts has become a major travelling/brand-boosting circus that must cater to a vastly increased audience, the vast majority of whom have no interest whatsoever in the technical aspects of the cars, they just want the mobile advertisement hoardings to provide a suitable spectacle. Winning by several minutes, as happened in the days of Jim Clark et al, is not what's wanted. Really what's needed to satisfy this need is highly-restricted (and therefore close) US-type racing, except that would no longer be F1. So we're between a rock and a hard place.
 
Awesome qualifying session... I'm sure some of you will watch it later so I won't spoil it, but the improvements in Q3 just kept coming. A masterclass.
 
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