Anderson: FIA wrong on Double-Diffuser
November 23, 2009 by Negative Camber
Filed under Prime & Option, Top Story
In an exclusive interview with F1B, veteran F1 car designer Gary Anderson said he believes the FIA should have disallowed the dual diffuser. The logic, and I have to agree with him, is that only 3 of the 10 teams had a dual diffuser and were operating on the spirit of the law. Fair enough if Ross Brawn felt he tried to get clarification and was turned down but was it the correct decision to allow the use of the controversial diffuser in Australia?
There was some dot connecting at the beginning of the year that suggested Toyota had hired former Honda employees who then helped the team and their partner Williams F1 out with the concept. Seems logical if not down right conspiracy worthy. But this cloak-n-dagger issue isn’t what concerned Anderson. His comment was elegantly simple much like his Jordan 191.
Anderson feels that the FIA should have had the gumption to make the right decision as a majority of the teams followed the letter of the law and only 3 teams had double diffusers. Simply put, majority should have ruled in this case as millions were spent trying to catch up. The FIA surely would have known the effect of the diffuser in aerodynamic efficiencies as well as what the teams were going to have to spend trying to catch up.
I must say that I agree. This isn’t really about a team that “just got it right” one year. It is a case of spirit versus letter of the law on the regulation and there is no doubt in my mind that had the teams possessing double diffusers been Ferrari, McLaren and Renault in March 2009; they would have been disallowed.
Does this marginalize Brawn GP or Buttons victory? No. They did what they had to do given the regulations they were given. What about the converse though? Three teams would have had to remove their diffuser at cost to them in order to comply. I agree with Anderson that forcing three teams to comply instead of forcing seven teams to re-engineer their entire cars with no in-season testing is the wrong decision.
What’s your opinion? Do you think it is just the luck of the draw and Brawn, Toyota and Williams were just more clever than the rest? Or did the FIA make a mistake in favor of upsetting the grid in order to provide an exciting year and remote chance for the privateers? One thing is certain, they turned the grid upside down and it cost untold millions for teams to catch up or die trying. KERS added the final nail in the coffin for Toyota and BMW and perhaps the R&D spent on trying to re-design their entire car to be somewhat competitive was a bridge too far. Perhaps we now know why Ferrari stopped mid-year on trying to catch up.
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Red Bull’s catch-up and the fact that Toyota and Williams did not continue to fare well make me think the way things turned out was okay.
Good point. I would throw McLaren in that too. Certainly from a performance standpoint the season didn’t deliver for Toyota or Williams although both teams look much improved from last year.
I wonder how many millions were spent by RBR and Macca to catch up? Newey said they had to re-design and engineer the entire back of the chassis including suspension I believe.
I don’t agree at all. Look at the history of F1. Someone comes up with a great idea for their car, they have an advantage for a while, everybody else copies it, then someone else comes up with a great idea. As an engineer, are you gonna design for the spirit of the law, which can always be interpreted different ways, or try to push the letter of the law? Wouldn’t that kill inovation? Just seems like sour grapes from the teams that were caught out
In the end, only one team can be said to have profited from the hole in the rules, and that is the one team owned by the person who actually tried to warn everybody else for this gaping hole.
Sounds like justice to me.
I agree with Rick’s sentiment, especially as I’ve heard no one refute Ross Brawn’s claim to call for clarification when the regulations were being drawn up. It is the rule maker’s responsibility to close the loopholes, not the engineers’ duty to avoid left field solutions in order to ensure they stick to the ‘letter’ of the law.
In the end, the legal — and no doubt political — persuasions of seven teams was not strong enough to ban this interpretation of the rules.
They should have paid more attention to Ross.
The spirit of the law should not even be part of the regulations. If that wording wasn’t in there we wouldn’t be having this conversation as the diffusers weren’t illegal.
However because the wording is there. The diffusers should have been declared illegal for the season.
If you want to outlaw a particular practice, then you need to make sure that the wording of the regulations is specific enough to make that clear. Clever designers and engineers will always come up with the very best solution available to them which does not breach the regulations. It’s what they do.
I don’t recall many people objecting to the way Ferrari cleverly designed their mirrors – mounting them on carbon fibre panels which just happen to direct the air around the sidepod. The 2009 regulations were supposed to be clear on aerodynamic pieces mounted on the bodywork, but they saw an opportunity which didn’t *quite* break the rules, and they took advantage of it. Good for them. But good for the double diffuser guys as well. It would have been unfair to penalise them for exploiting an opportunity in a poorly drafted technical regulation.
Having Adrian Newey no doubt helped RBR immeasurably.
I have always felt a bit split on this issue. On the one hand I agree with the sentiments of those who are saying engineers are supposed to work the loopholes and push boundaries, and coupled with that is the fact Brawn did hint at what he was thinking of.
On the other hand this was a special case where those who stuck with the spirit of the law did so in the interests of improving the sport by increasing overtaking. I think it’s been said many times before that those who didn’t do the DDD weren’t too stupid to do it; maybe they didn’t think of it because it would clearly have gone against what they were trying to acheive.
In the end I think they should have banned it, not to penalise Brawn (and of course we don’t really know how much it would have impacted their performance) but to give us a better show. In this case I think that is the most important outcome.
A fair point to mention the ‘better show’, but then here’s a question: how much more disruptive is the wake generated by this DDD? Does anyone know?
Were the other seven teams concerned about improving the show when they took action, or about negating a key advantage of their competitors?
“I have always felt a bit split on this issue.”
Nice :-)
Creative interpretation of the rules is part of the F1 DNA.
Furthermore, basing decisions about the rules on anything other than the text, is manipulation of the rules and inherently bad. There should be no ’spirit’, no ‘majority rules’, no political consideration. Any foray into those shadows will only serve to undermine the integrity of the sport, as evidenced by the FIA’s inconsistent and embarrassing verdicts over the years.
The fact the Ross Brawn had approached everyone(including his competition) to highlight the loophole and that nobody bothered to a) close the loop hole b) the rivals were “Renault” enough to follow the rules too tee
are good enough to absolve Ross Brawn and his engineers of any wrong doing.
And of course based on the history of FIA, the decision to allow DDD cars as legal was not taken above board, it was based on which team was charged of non compliance. FIA waffling constantly not objective in its rulings have hurt the image of motorsports in general and F1 particular.
I for one still blame Max’s constant rule tinkering in name of cost cutting forcing teams (with more monies) to spend more and smaller teams (like Paul Stoddart, nobody talks of that guy) to bow out and ultimately the team with more monies leaving the sport as well. nuff rant
Gary Anderson is absolutley spot on.
The brief of the working group on aero regs was to encorage close following and overtaking.
At a stroke the DD made a nonsense of thier ideas and efforts by creating a more turbulant wake of “dirty Air”.
Mosley was screaming about cost cutting and then allowed, (or perhaps even encouraged), a decission, that ment seven teams had to spend millions to re -design. After KERS just another instance of his brilliance.
I’m going to have to agree with you here Stuart. It is not an indictment of Brawn GP or marginalizing their efforts. It is more a statement about how poorly the FIA managed the issue. It cost untold millions to play in Brawn GP’s sandbox this year and all this when cost cutting was the issue. More of Max’s rampant pragmatism at work.
@Fastcars- I may be wrong but I was thinking I recalled Flavio leveraging an accusation at Brawn for nondisclosure or dodgy tactics on the diffuser issue.
@ubergreg- there was some discussion on that over the year about how the DD did ruin or create a large disruption in the air and it prevented the OWG’s regulations from working. That and KERS.
i think instead of banning the the double diffusers,the FIA should have added ballast to the double diffuser cars to even things up some,and if any of the none double diffuser cars went to the double diffuser,they would run ballast to,09 was a fluke because of the FIA’S bad judgement on this issue
the bigger issue still remains that some teams approached the fia with similar ideas and were told not to bother.
saying that the brawn team were somehow so superiorly clever just doesn’t ring true. this isn’t meant as a slight on brawn… but they were gifted a huge chunk dominance.
Very good point Noddy (as usual), I had forgotten that there were teams who did bring this before the FIA and were told no. That, in my mind, is a grave mistake. There is a lack of parity in favor of the small teams but that was the entire motivation in the waning months of the Mosley regime. Possibly fueled by Ecclestone’s fear of FOTA doing to him what he did to FISA with the FOCA group.
F1 is about innovation. Otherwise it becomes Nascar. Push the envelope, don’t hope you (and everyone else) is stuck inside of it.
True, innovation is key to F1. However, as Noddy stated, teams that chose not to use it did so because they thought it was illegal. But they still knew about it even though it didn’t appear on their cars at the season start.
Rules exploitation shouldn’t be confused with doing a better job.
I disagree 100%. I miss the days when a team came up with a different idea and the cars actually looked different. What if when Jim Hall showed up with his revolutionary wing they told he couldn’t use it because nobody else has one? PLeeeeese these cars all look like they came out of the same cutter because of the strict rules. Instead of more rules there should be a reduction of them so we can see creativity again.
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Hi Pete. I completely understand your desire for original thinking. bring back the Fan Car!! :)
Lotus 88, anyone???
Or the Homer mobile
It is with a very fond heart I will always remember the generally unlimited Can-AM racing car.
petek, I agree with you about deregulating the cars… but the issue isn’t that Brawn came up with something no one else thought of… Renault and Red Bull were told that they couldn’t use it so they didn’t develop one.
I honestly believe that if newey had been allowed to design their car properly from the beginning Brawn would have been a non issue this season
I dont think the issued is whether the diffusers were made legal or not. The issue is more (like Noddy pointed out) that other teams were told no when they asked about the loophole, and that the FIA were clearly seen to be biased AGAIN.
Where is the parity?
I think this is a case of its better to ask forgiveness than permission
That is always a good F1 rule of thumb. :)
From what I’ve read on the regs, the DDD are illegal. period. It doesnt matter if only three or 9 teams came up with that idea. The DDDs are higher than allowed and so they should have re-sized them. In principle it seems a double mistake by the FIA; the came up with sloppy regs, and they favored the underdogs to break the pecking order and bring more exciment to the championship. In the end it was good but it was detrimental for most of the teams.
The FiA did not do their job properly. As has been stated other teams brought forward similar designs and were rebuffed. Its not an indictment of BrawnGP but of the governing body. Imagine Newey, McLaren, and Ferrari designing proper multi level diffuser designs and and think about what that would have done to level the playing field. That diffusers provide a significant advantage cannot be questioned. When they were declared legal the entirety of the field modified their existing designs, at significant cost during a period of economic crisis and without the benefit of on track testing, to accommodate the device. That wouldn’t have happened if their benefit was questionable. And they forced it onto a less than optimal design while Brawn designed 3 cars and picked the best one. That’s a heck of an advantage but the big dogs overtook Brawn from a performance perspective and made the championships somewhat interesting, at least for a while.
I agree PC. It must be pointed out that it, as you say, is not an indictment of Brawn at all but of the FIA. I think that was Gary’s point as well.