Let's face it the sport we love is not only a sport, its business, BIG business and the stakes are high. The old adage about power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely holds true for many of us , but the teams are forced to try and gain advantage in a world where victory is based on optimising the last fractions of a percent to be better than the second placed guy.
Technology.
I love it and I hate it; I love to see the fantastically elegant solutions the engineers dream up and implement... but then this leaves the sport open to the criticism that a 19, or 20 year old kid can get into a car and post competitive lap times against an experienced pilot. However, this is risk reduction... and the teams are forced down that road by needing to win;
Take traction control; I'll be interested to see how they cope next year when it's banned (although I fully expect some 'work arounds' to appear early on). As a team boss would you develop a TC system, or leave it to the skill of your driver to wring the best performance out of the car without spinning at least once during a race...? it's a no brainer.
The same applies to semi-automatic gear shifts; why would you risk the driver screwing it up when you can design a nearly foolproof system to avoid the possibility of driver error?
So that days of race outcomes being decided by who makes the fewest mistakes are almost gone; as a team boss you'll try and design out the possibility for your driver to throw the race away for you and the consequence is that most of the drivers are kids who are good at console games. I'm completely undecided about whether F1 should effectively become a single make series, so we could see who the best driver is, or whether we keep pushing the technology boundaries. In my view we are a kind of halfway house at the moment. Max is trying to standardise this and that, pushing it towards a spec series. I wuld prefer the push to either go all the way, or to relax the rules so that the small teams (and the big ones for that matter) can really innovate instead of it becoming a race of who has the most powerful computers, or the most wind tunnels to wring out that last fraction of a percent from the CFD - On this basis the B teams will always be last and the biggest budget will always win (except Toyota of course
)Bending the rules;
At what point does a rule bend become cheating? My €0.02 is that it's when there is a clear breach of the regulations. That means that a flexible floor is good design whilst it passes the tests, and it's down to the regulator (FIA) to come up with another rule to force me to stop. Same goes for bendy rear wing mounts, bendy front wing elements, bridge wings, etc... Thise who bellyache that something is not in the spirit of the regulations are bound to lose because the winner will be the one who interprets the rule book in the most effective way and challenges the regulator to prove he's transgressed.
Business principles;
I think the Stepneygate sage is very sad. I work in an industry that has had some extremely large antitrust settlements recently (hundreds of million Euro fines levied against the cheats - and rightly so IMO).
This is big business, not just a sport. People should know the rules of the game and if this sport were regulated by the European Commission rather than the FIA I think the fine would have been much higher. In my industry if someone came to me with another company's R&D I'd be running to the lawyers office so fast you wouldn't see me for dust...
I think McLaren will suffer next year even more heavily; I think some of the headline sponsors must be thinking very hard about whether they wish their company to be associated with an organisation that has demonstrated very poor judgement on the issue of fundamental busness principles. Looking at other peoples cars is gathering competior information, being handed an R&D dossier and, more importantly, using it, is just plain illegal - it's theft! My company spends millions of dollars per annum on R&D; why? it's an investment - they do it because it earns more than it costs. If someone takes that investment and hands it to the competition then that competitor knows my philosophy, they know my strategy and they have a significant (and unfair) competitive advantage. Whether, or not McLaren used the knowedge to build parts into their car is almost academic. Knowing how Ferrari operate is invaluable in being able to compete against them.
Furthermore, the development pipeline to implement the technology arising from the R&D division in F1 is very short and immensely high pressure. Any interruption is damaging to the team as we all know that cars are continuously developed throughout the season. It's a great shame that a couple of individuals have stuffed up a great season and tainted the efforts of two great teams. I only hope that they, and others, learn a lesson.
well, I could rant on for much longer, but that'll do for a start...
Mine expired yesterday... Now that I reread the post, I only made a couple of mistakes: that has some merit.