Toto Accuses Red Bull
Toto Accuses Red Bull
The political game in F1 is as important as the racing that happens on track. And this season may be the most interesting yet where we have team bosses going at each other week to week. While the past 2 weeks was Red Bull’s Christian Horner accusing Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff swindling the FIA to succumbing to their needs, this time it’s the other way around with Toto accusing Horner and Red Bull of bending the rules way past what is legal.
SO what are Toto and Christian fighting about this time? Well you’re going to stick around to find out. But before we get to the good stuff, consider subscribing as we upload 4 videos at the minimum every week just to keep you guys updated on the latest happenings in the F1 space. Now that’s out of the way, let’s get to it…
As we all can remember, a good number of the drivers and Mercedes took a stance against the FIA and the problem that has plagued every F1 team on the grid to some degree. And because of that stance, the FIA issued a 2 part technical directive to combat the said problem. One was an effort to measure and police the levels of vertical oscillations as further research on the phenomena that will the FIA come up with an all-encompassing solution for it.
While this is straightforward and easy to impose and regulate, the 2nd part of the directive is what has been controversial. The 2nd directive mainly is about the FIA focusing on the plank wear and flexibility as they consider this to be related to the same issues and goes hand in hand to the metric that they have. And this is where Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff would catch their rival teams red-handed.
See the FIA’s sudden focus on this suggests that the allowance of 2mm flexibility in the bodywork within the area defined as the plank has been bent to the extremes by some teams on the grid aka Red Bull and Ferrari who have experienced the least porpoising out of all the teams on the grid.
The rules only specify that deflections should not be greater than 2mm at two specific positions, at the leading edge of the plank and slightly further back. These 2 points are the only thing in the rule book. The FIA does not take measurements at the rear and around where the driver sits. And being that these 2 points take the hardest beating while porpoising, it would be logical for teams to bend the rules to soften the impact in these areas.
So some teams aka Red Bull and Ferrari are believed to have engineered the mounting of the plank and skid block in a way that gives the car and the driver a good amount of cushioning. Toto Wolff would comment on these allegations of their rival teams cheating saying:
“Nobody had an idea until the FIA brought it up in the last Technical Advisory Committee. Which was to a great surprise of all the teams because what’s in the regulations, and what was the intent of the regulations, it’s pretty clear. There is no argument why that could deflect more than what’s in the regs. A bit of a surprise to say the least, more of a shocker. From France this interpretation will not be accepted and any cars with this solution in place will be required to make changes in order not to be considered in breach of those two regulations.”
Mercedes head of trackside engineering Andrew Shovlin would also comment on the discovery saying:
When it came to light, we realized there are opportunities that we’ve perhaps not been taking or exploiting. So, it won’t affect in how we run our car. It may well be it affects our competitors and by virtue of that we move a little bit closer.”
And as expected Red Bull team boss Christian Horner would defend his team saying that their cars fully conform to what the FIA had said in the rule book. In response to this shocking revelation, FIA’s single seater technical director Nikolas Tombazi has announced that teams with this illegal setup will not be allowed to race once the race calendar arrives in France.
This means both Ferrari and Red Bull have 3 weeks to redo their setup before they face further consequences from the FIA. Nikolas would clarify that these measures were made to ensure that all teams are on the same playing field. He would also say that the FIA believed teams having excessive deformation of the floor was being done: “to achieve significantly lower ride heights, and hence an indirect aerodynamic gain.”
On the other hand, the FIA would say that the 2mm tolerance will be rigorously enforced would and the stiffness around the floor hole must now be uniform for a radial distance of 15mm outside the periphery – with a variance not exceeding 10 percent either way. The FIA would also add:
“Competitors will be required to demonstrate compliance with these provisions by way of a detailed inspection of both the CAD and the physical installation, as well as Finite Element analysis.”
Mclaren’s team boss Andreas Seidl would tell the media that he is happy that the FIA are making these kind of efforts saying:
“There must be a reason why Nikolas has put up some clarifications in what he wants to see and what he expects. From our point of view, we are happy with this clarification which is in the TD because in the end it should help us that we are all on a level playing field.”
And as for Horner, we can all remember him as the angriest one out of all the team bosses on the grid when news broke that the FIA will be trying to come up with technical directives that will hopefully lead to an all-encompassing solution to porpoising. Saying that it would be unfair for teams that have figured the porpoising out to succumb to whatever the FIA wants in terms of setup.
But one may argue though that a ruling like that would ensure that every team is starting on an even playing field. Especially now that it has been revealed that the top 2 teams on the grid are bending the rules to gain the upper hand. And this past week has been no different as Horner believes that it is getting dangerous. In his words:
We haven’t governed for that and the cost involved… sometimes the unintended consequences for changing philosophies, it will affect what you carry over and it will affect the design and development.
“The most important thing and biggest way to achieve stable costs is stability. The cars will converge. You can see that already, the cars are certainly looking more familiar and that will continue over the next six-to-nine months. The most important thing is don’t d**k with it, leave it alone and the teams will sort it out. “When you look at it from a purist point of view, it is not ideal because it seems we are giving more and more influence to the FIA to dictate more and more what your set-up is. At what point do they say you have to run a certain rear wing or a certain ride height? It is a dangerous avenue to go down. “I understand on the grounds of safety that this is being introduced because the porpoising on a limited amount of cars is obviously at an extreme level. [The FIA] are keen to have a mechanism to control that but hopefully it is only something that will be there for this year as it is something that hopefully all the teams will be on top of and cars will converge next year. It is certainly not a precedent that we want to set.”
But with all of that, when Christain was asked on whether or not the focus from porpoising has shifted to flexing has surprised him he would reply with:
“Obviously it’s a key performance factor so you can understand why they are looking at it. But if a car runs wide at Copse, I’m sure the driver’s backside is getting pretty warm with the amount of wood he’s leaving on the aggressive kerbing there. So it’s something that, as the regulators, they are closely looking at, that there’s no abuse of it. But it has to be subjective.”
To say that things will get interesting after this is such an understatement. I know we say that a lot on this channel but this will reveal just how good Red Bull and Ferrari truly are. Or have they been the benefactors of how perfectly they have been bending the rules up to this point?
And if you’re a Mercedes fan, this must bring hope to you since Red Bull and Ferrari’s true performance is still in doubt. But what do you think? Will we see a drastic change in Red Bull and Ferrari’s performance after they make the change? Let us know in the comment section below and don’t forget to like and subscribe to the channel if you haven’t!
