Thursday, January 7, 2010

2010 Last Year For Double Diffusers

Autosport reports that the FIA is planning to eliminate the "double-diffuser" loophole for 2011:
It is understood that efforts are now being made to sort out the wording of the regulations to ensure that there are no loopholes that will allow anyone to continue using a double diffuser.

Once the wording of the rules has been sorted, it will then be put to the FIA's official Technical Working Group for ratification prior to going through the channels required for it to get put into the 2011 regulations.
The article speculates such a change will reduce the cars' lapping capabilities by around one second per lap.

The main advantage to "the show" should be that by eliminating the double-diffuser, it should clean up the airflow behind the cars, permitting other cars to follow more closely. This, theoretically, should improve passing.

It is good that this rules change is being brought about for 2011, and not a knee-jerk implementation for 2010. At this point, the 2010 cars have been designed and are being built; major changes in the regulations are to be avoided.

This does nothing to improve the show for 2010. As I have written before, my concern is that eliminating the fuel stops will mean that there will be even fewer changes of position in 2010 since the cars are not going to be any more capable of getting close to each other than they were in 2009.