Diffuse Speculation

F1Fanatic has a guest article up discussing the impending diffuser wars.

That teams can run a central section at all is of some contention. However a close reading of the rules suggests that a 150mm central section extending beyond the main diffuser is permissible. [...] The theory is simple. By increasing the overall volume of the diffuser air can be slowed in a more controlled fashion which reduces the odds of flow separation. I find it hard to believe that the FIA will outlaw this central tunnel as it is a fair interpretation of the rules.

Setup for a farce

Of course, since the FIA is involved, that's a given these days.

So the news of the moment is that the FIA has decided on a budget cap for 2010 of £30 million (roughly US$42 million). This is to include everything including driver salaries. Participation within the cap is voluntary; however participation will yield unlimited technical freedom in some areas. The FIA promises to tweak those areas of technical freedom on an ongoing basis to ensure parity between the capped and unlimited teams.

Left unspecified is the time frame of this cap -- could a team spend $50 million this year on development for next, and still count as a "capped" team?

I can already see loopholes. Capped teams will be permitted to pay dividends to their owners should they turn a profit (as some likely will). These owners can be engineers, drivers, and other organizations.

So follow my whimsy for a minute.

Lets say you have a cap team at $42 million that sees revenues of $100 million (not unreasonable today), for a profit of $58 million. So what you do is you sell part of your team to your driver of the year. He takes a nominal salary for the year, and at the end of the year receives his dividend on the profit. Once he's done this, he sells his share of the team back to the ownership group (or, more likely, on to the driver for the next year).

Of course it will only work while the team is turning a profit, but since most teams see more revenues than $42 million (and the top teams well in excess of that), there's profit to be shared.

Naturally there is a lot of ground to cover before anything like this come to be reality, but this thought exercise shows the futility of trying to limit expenditures.

That's the tenth: Brawn GP car runs at Silverstone

Autosport has the early picture of the BrawnGP (formerly Honda) car running at Silverstone. We can't tell much from the single picture put up, but the car does have an unusual low nose drooping over the front wing; Autosport describes the sidepods as "highly sculpted", although we are yet to see photos of the overall car for ourselves.

The car is due to run at Barcelona next week and we will probably get a better look at the car at that point.

Farewell Montreal

Grandprix.com eulogizes the Canadian Grand Prix at Montreal.

I have to admit I am not surprised; as in any international "sport", the organization tends to follow the money. And if places like Malaysia and Singapore are willing to pay millions to get an event while the Canadians are not, well the sport follows the money simple enough.

But I am disappointed. I did go to several events in the mid 90s, and more recently went for the Friday practice sessions as I enjoyed the sights, sounds, and smells of the cars once a year. I was home for the rest of the weekend because I felt one got better coverage of the event's portions that count through the TV.

I was hoping take the boys out to a Friday when they got older, so they could share a little bit with their father something that I enjoy.

But all that has passed, for now. Maybe F1 will come back to Canada when the developing nations stall in development... but I honestly don't think so. I think a return to somewhere in the US is far more likely.

As I said, the sport follows the money.

No Changes Behind The Wheels

With Rubens Barrichello seemingly confirmed at Honda/Brawn for 2009, every team except the two Red Bull organizations will start the year with the same driver lineups that they finished 2008 with. This seeming stasis in Formula 1 has left some up and coming drivers out in the cold.

This is an unusual amount of stability for Formula 1. It also means all the speculative press from last year amounted to precisely nothing.

USF1 Spoof Site

Well, them good ol' boys may not have them there Forumulated One cars figgurd out so good, but they got themselves one of them there 'blog' things in the intertubes, complete with photos of their development car and secret footage of crash tests.

They're even on Twitter, too.

Funniest thing I've read all week.

What do the teams really think of each other's chances?

I was reading Vijay Mallya's comments about Force India's prospects for the upcoming season:

Vijay Mallya says his Force India team have 'no excuses' not to score regular points in 2009 thanks to their technical partnership with McLaren-Mercedes.

He's wrong, of course, in a pinch excuses will be found; but this got me wondering about how the various teams view each other.

There are two ways to analyze this statement. Firstly, and most obviously, there is the publicity angle. I don't think any team is formed, in any league at any level, to just "show up". You want to do well, you want to be improving. There will be ups and downs of course, but the ultimate goal is to one day win the various championships. As such, you don't want to be quoted in the media as saying things like "well our chances are pretty bad and we expect to be at the back of the grid all year long again". Such talk does nothing to encourage sponsors to be associated with your effort.

The second, and in my view more interesting, way to interpret the statement is that the team has evaluated the rest of the field and thinks they have a legitimate potential to do as well as they say they do.

This made me wonder -- just what do the various teams think the relative performances of each other are? Naturally, everyone except Ferrari and Mclaren presumes they are in the top half -- and Ferrari and Mclaren know they are in the top half. Everyone else is more or less up for grabs. But if you could get all those evaluations, then average them somehow, and then compare those predictions to the end of the season... that might be interesting.

It'll never happen, of course. But it is still fun to contemplate.

Oh, and while we're contemplating, here are the studio photos from the Force India launch.

Update: Technical analysis, too.