EU ruling banning cigarette advertising in all sports. F1 actually got 5 years extra to get rid of it!

As for the V8's, I am not a fan of that idea either. but......it should lend itself well to the smaller teams, the power difference between say Ferarri and Cosworth will be noticably smaller.

 

Why the lack of love for the V8? Just wondering, as I have no special love for V-10s (hooray, we invented a configuration with no inherent advantages over a V8 or V12)

Though the 2.4L thing is somewhat offputting to me. I would have preferred to see them adopt the universal ECU rule, change to 3.0L V8's and limit RPM to no more than 15,000.

 

I think your suggestion would level the playing field even more. Is that just your opinion, or have there been rumors of the proposed changes you mentioned?

 

The common ECU was a rule change that they were talking about doing last year, don't know how that ended up though.

The displacement and rev limit were my own opinion though.

 

At the FIA meeting a while back where Ferrari was the only team to show up, they went over some possible rule changes to reduce costs. The standard ECU was one of them.

The rest of the proposed rules can be seen here.

 

Well my lack of "V8 love" is from the fact, thats not the problem with F1! Its not the engines, the hay day of F1 there were V12's V10's Turbo V8's, I think even V6's as well!! They have wanted to slow down the cars for the last 10 years(FOR SOME UNKNOWN REASON!!!) they tried the grooved tires, no good just went to wider fronts to supplament the lack of contact. Ok now they are trying the smaller engines, and it might work, but if you want ot slow the cars down and make it more of a drivers race than a cars race take away the downforce!! or regulate the engine power to the amount of downforce allowed. Example you have a V12 making more power than say the V8's then you should get less wing, and vice versa, smaller engine ability to run more wing! My other issue is this stupid idea of trying to make F1 racing cheap....listne this isnt backyard racing, we dont want every shmuck in the world trying to start a racing team, this is F1!! The most techy cars in the world but we are trying to save a few bucks here and there with tires and engines???? Come on, thats crap, junk all the driver aide computers that would save WAY more than tires and engines!!!!

 

You make some excellent points, the only one I really disagree on is the "cheap" route. They don't need to go cheap, but budgets really need to never exceed about $100-$150 million. Quite frankly, I think Ford was right, the investment required to win in F1 (Ferrari and Toyota spend upwards of $300 million IIRC) just isn't worth it. You lose more than you'll ever gain.

As for the V8, I suppose it doesn't really matter if it's a V-6, V-8, V-10, or V-12. That's just the direction I would go. I stand by the RPM limit idea though. It will increase engine reliability, while also reducing engineering and production costs for said engine. The aerodynamics on the cars could stand to be knocked back a few notches. But I only support such measures as long as they don't turn it into NASCAR (I stopped watching that garbage for a reason).

I like your idea of junking some or all of the electronic driver's aides. These are supposed to be the best drivers in the world (apparently they've never heard of WRC, but that's a discussion for another time), it seems fitting that the cars would rely more on the driver's skill.

Your post reminded me of something I thought about the other day in regards to F1. For all these rule changes that are supposed to slow the cars and make things cheaper... they seem to do neither effectively. The teams seem to always gain back the speed they loose, and the constant rule changes drive costs up, not down.
That's actually part of the 3.0L V8 idea I outlined, to go along with the new engines I would add a couple rules and try to keep a firm, constant rule base with only tweaks when necessary.

For engine related rules I'd go 3.0L V8, common ECU, and a valve surface area rule. Let me explain that last one, it's something I came up with when talking to someone about bringing back real Trans-Am racing. The idea here is to measure the area of each valve surface to come up with an aggregate. You can run any cam/valve combo you want (SOHC 2-valve, SOHC 3-valve, DOHC 5-valve, any you can imagine) so long as the total valve surface area is within spec.

I don't know exactly what I'd do aerodynamically, the raising of the front wing and moving the rear wing forward seem like a good start though.

 

Yeah I think the speed guy durning therace were talking about the areo packages and the new rules and stated that the engineers have gained back close to all of what they lost by the new aero rules with the higher front wing and rear wing move. But I dont see the problem with that, I would rather see different designs and ideas on how to run the cars, this is F1 , not nascar(or as I like to call it the IROC race!! again another conversation all together!!) so there should be certain rules, tires...ok I can understand that if was a safety thing, but your still fueling the cars and that where a majority of the danger is, a motor that last for 2 races...ok that makes some sense cause that could make some interesting stratagies for the season and how hard they run the cars, which could make for more and different winners(BONUS!!) But here again what you "save" in the engine and tyres you just end up spending in wind tunnel work and other areas to gain back that speed you have lost.

I personnally would love to see them just let them go and see what these engineers could come up with in like 10 years for car, engines, and aero packages. I mean look at the F1 cars that were 15 years ago compared to the new cars, and these have gained speed even with all these slow down rules, could you imagine how fast they COULDbe going with out them???? :drive:

EDIT: I suppose they would be going about as fast as my AV! LOL

 

On this point you are absolutely correct, which is why I think you need to do something aerodynamically or not even bother. I'd like to see some of the wings and fins taken off the cars, something.

Part of me really likes the idea of just letting them go and seeing what happens, but with the budgets of teams like Toyota and Ferrari, I'm not sure it's a good idea. Costs have gotten out of control in F1. I like the idea of becoming a single tire series for a couple reasons:

1.) It "nerfs" one of Ferrari's advantages in having a tire built around their chassis

2.) It allows the F1 management to dictate a price for tires, thereby controlling costs on that front.

One thing I think we definitely agree on is, with the way Management is making the rules their cost-cutting measures will never work.

 

Exactly!