The idea that the championship winner should rotate like chickens in a rotisserie oven makes a mockery of the sport. There doesn't have to be 7 different teams winning the championship in the next 7 seasons.Dunlay wrote: ↑21 May 2024, 05:24The sliding scale would be a continous sorting process. No point in fiddling it because a team has closed the gap. The intent was to keep the teams bunched closer in competition. Only because Red Bull had such a massive advantage these past couple of years, that process seemed like it wasn't working. The success of that process would inevitably dethrone one team from the top, only to be dethroned by another or by the one that got dethroned. Unfortunately, Red Bull has a big gap to McLaren which shows the duration for which Red Bull enjoyed their advantage. So until Red Bull stays on top of the constructors' ranking, they would have to feel the pain of others getting larger ATR time.AR3-GP wrote: ↑21 May 2024, 00:19It will take miracle work to out develop Mclaren. They have more windtunnel and cfd hours. The ATR system was not thought out fully. What does Mclaren still need extra allocation for?
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An "ATR" period is roughly 8-9 weeks (~2 months each). There are 6 of them in a year. That is 144 additional windtunnel runs and ~1000 additional CFD items in a 6-month period. It's absurd to keep such an advantage now that there is hardly any margin between the two teams. The sliding scale should push teams to close up (even if it is artificial and BOP at heart) and then cease to exist as soon as they have caught up. The cost cap was put in place to balance resources. The current situation is paradoxical.
In any case, I would expect the next upgrade of any significance near the British GP. That is based on historical precedent.
More than the 2024 situation, I think start of 2025 would be a much bigger hit to Red Bull as McLaren would have had larger chunk of development time for the second half of 2024 too, that should in theory, make their car faster than Red Bull in 2025, who would still be getting lesser ATR time due to remaining ahead in 2024 WCC. But that's the objective of sliding scale! Rotating the teams at the top. Unless RBR has much better ideas than McLaren to develop their car with lesser ATR, they would start 2nd of 3rd best car in 2025. I have a feeling that 2025, the last year of the regulations, might just be another 2021. If Mercedes can sort themselves out through this year, they would have the largest ATR time of anyone and if miraculously come with a car that can fight amongst the top, we have a 4 way battle.
Mclaren's current upgrades were completed months ago. The benefit of that extra time in this first 6 months of the year hasn't even shown itself yet. This is a frightening thought considering that they are already matching Red Bull. F1 never could have predicted Mclaren's wayward trajectory so it's possibly going to prove to be an unintended outcome of the ATR that slipped through the cracks. No one would want Red bull at it's current pace to have that additional time even if they hadn't won the championships last year. It follows logically that it should be frightening that Mclaren has those extra hours with their current pace. I don't understand why so many people underestimate or otherwise downplay Mclaren.