How much do you feel Bridgestone's winter tire development helped them this year so far? Or are they at the top because of the Ferrari whistle-blowers last year on Michelin tire width?
It seems like if that rule was never adjusted (tire width measured after a race) this season could be a lot different as Michelin tries to catch up again.
Hard to say,even if Michelin concentrated on their 'hot weather' advantage (which i doubt they would) doesn't look too good at the minute. IMO it looks as if Bridgestone have done a cracking job,but we won't know how good for another few races.I don't know how much work Sauber has been doing with Bridgestone and Ferrari but it might be that that's just giving them the edge.
Well, I think in F1 with all of the "out of the box" thinking, that there is probably some creative interpretation of the rules going on. It seems like the process is more like this:
My team introduces an innovation that skirts the rules, bends, or creativly interprets them. Someone sees this, takes it to teh governign body and asks for a change, clarification, or whatever. Then the governing body decides one way or the other...is this cheating? I imagine that if they wanted the frontrunners could probably get one or two bits of each comptitors cars declared illegal, but it might not be worth it to them.
As for outright cheating, like having a slightly larger engine or illegal material or some such...i would have to imagine that the teams figure taht the others will catch on so quickly they'd be bounced right away.
But then again, I'd probably be trying to do anything, leagl or not if I was behind Ferrari right now.