Seems I recall a little comment about F1 engineers and Playstation games recently from Mr. Ecclestone and now Max takes a shot at the engineers. Apparently the engineers are the bane of F1 as opposed to the wizards of F1. Seems the ongoing quest to find lighter, stronger materials has racked up some hefty expenses as exotic compounds and designs are purchased in hopes of reducing a cars lap times by a tenth of a second. All of this sounds rather straightforward considering the teams spend insane amounts of money on inane parts but is it really that daft? It is a sport centered around speed and the lighter a car, the faster it goes and the stronger the material, the safer (theoretically) it is.
In Max’s mind, F1 costs too much and one of the reasons given are those pesky, ever-changing egregious rules that limit engineers work. That’s an astute observation on many levels and oddly those very rules have been dreamed up, penned and foisted on the teams by the FIA…Isn’t Max the President of the FIA? So Max and Bernie think the engineering has gotten out of hand and that engineers should be at home playing with their playstations? Fine. Apparently the regulations that have constantly changed and in many respects damaged this sport have been directed at putting a muzzle on the engineers and restricting their work. Or so it would seem according to Mr. Mosley.
Most fans have been complaining about the regulation changes for many years now and this comment allows us to see the results of Max’s pragmatism in its available light. No surprise then that his regulations have done little to stop the escalating costs of F1 starting with the grooved tire debacle all the way to the Engine Freeze. And to think, it was those pesky engineers all the time.
“what isn´t working out in Formula One today wasn´t working out before the economic problems came along. Essentially, these are the ever-stricter rules which limit the work of engineers to more and more restricted areas.”
“Success in Formula One today consists of optimising each little bit of the chassis, which is ever more costly and completely absurd,” Mosley said in addressing the opening day of the Motor Sport Business Forum.
By way of example Mosley pointed out: “A Formula One team spends 1,000 dollars for a special wheel nut imported from California and uses 1,000 per season, so that produces an overall bill of a million dollars a year.”
He added that the constant search for new, lighter materials “has created a mentality in Formula One which forces the engineers to refine as opposed to innovate and that is slowly destroying Formula One.
“It´s all very expensive and that´s not really an engineer´s mission.”
