Following on from the description of the 2009 Sporting Regulations, I will look at the changes in the Technical Regulations, which were released in PDF format on the FIA's site on 12 January 2009. This part will look at Articles 1 to 3.7 inclusive, taking in some definition changes and the first part of the aerodynamic changes. I had intended to do everything in one blog entry, but if you look at the aerodynamics rules too long, it makes your head spin...
Firstly, the 2009 document is substantially longer. This is partly due to KERS, which has required additional regulations in order to describe its permissible parameters.
The additions begin in the definitions section. A KERS system is considered to be
“A system that is designed to recover kinetic energy from the car during braking, store that energy and make it available to propel the car.”
Seems like a straightforward definition to me.
Less obvious is the need for the following definition to be added:
“1.21 Open and closed sections
A section will be considered closed if it is fully complete within the dimensioned boundary to which it is referenced, if it is not it will be considered open.”
I suppose one could call it an “anti-fancy-bracket” rule, but that is suggesting that teams had parts of sections outside the regulations before without penalty.
There has been a subtle change to Article 2.5. Last year, it was about the restriction of “Novel technologies”. Now it is about the restriction of “New systems, procedures or technologies”. This is a key difference because it means practically everything that is done differently can be stamped out by the FIA at the end of the season during which it is introduced. This stifles the point of innovation, which is to gain advantage. Therefore it is a bad move. It is made worse by the fact that the end of the Article has not been modified to take the alterations to the beginning of the Article into account. So strictly speaking, any new procedure or system could trigger a Formula One Commision investigation at the end of the season, but only a new technology could be banned by such a process.
The regulation stating that total downforce must be below 12500N has been replaced with one stating that the intent of the aero rules is to reduce the damage done by aerodynamic wakes and one allowing infinite accuracy to be assumed for “certain measurements”. Although it is good that the tolerance rule brought in towards the end of the 1999 season is being repealed, I would have been a lot happier if the FIA had specified which measurements were supposed to have infinite accuracy assumed for their measurement. Otherwise it could easily become a subjective scrutineering issue or worse still a political football.
The maximum width of the cars has been reduced from 2.0 metres to 1.8 metres. However, the measurement need no longer be taken from the front and rear wheel centre lines...
The permissible width bodywork between the front and rear wheels has also narrowed by 20cm, from 1.6 metres to 1.4 metres. The width restriction front of the front wheel centre line is now 1.8 metres (the same as the bodywork width behind the rear wheel centre line), instead of the 1.4 metres. This is why the front wings have suddenly got so much wider, and also why the side pods are now so much more neatly packaged than before.
A small loophole permitting bodywork forward of the front wheel centre line and angled away from the points of likely contact with other to be very narrow has been removed. This will make front wings less fiddly, but is unlikely to have any other effect.
The width of bodywork behind the rear wheel centre line has been massively reduced. Before, it could be as wide as the car. Now, anything behind the rear wheel centre line that is less than 20cm above the reference plane has to be less than 75cm wide. Anything above that height can be up to 1 metre wide. The more extreme coke-bottle shapes may be attributed to this rule.
The cars are also slightly lower. No bodywork can be more than 95cm high, whereas last year it could be 97cm high.
The regulations for front bodywork height are now extremely fiddly. Before:
bodywork that was in front of a point 33.5cm behind the front wheel centre axle had to be at least 10cm above the reference plane.
if it was also 25cm or more away from the centre of the car had to be at least 30cm above the reference plane.
There was another article saying all bodywork in that position had to be at least 5cm above the reference plane, but it was logically impossible to breach that Article without breaching the one before it (from where the above list was derived).
Now, the key point has moved half a centimetre forward to 33cm behind the front wheel. Don't ask me why, I didn't make up these rule changes*! Bodywork 25cm or more away from the centre of the car now has to to be between 7.5cm and 27.5cm from the reference plane. But it gets more complicated for the bodywork closer to the centre line of the car...
Bodywork less than 25cm from the centre of the car that is also between 12 and 20cm above the reference line has to be two or fewer sections containing a maximum of 5000mm sqaured of surface. Each section can also be no more than 2.5cm thick. This/these section(s) must also be joined to the main part of the car using vertical attachments of no more than 1cm radius. Also, the point from which this regulation applies is 45cm from the front wheel centre axle, not 33cm like the other regulations. That is a very precisely-written Article (3.7.2, if you want to check I haven't dumped something simple into a Ronspeak generator by mistake) which would appear to have a specific function in mind with regard to the aerodynamic effects the cars have. Doubtless it is an article that the technical directors will be paying particular attention to (and getting headaches from), a point reinforced by the FIA specifying that any sections of bodywork here must be “closed” by its new definition of the term.
There's a very good reason for this extremely complicated regulation. The FIA has used Article 3.7.2 to enforce all wings to be attached in roughly the same place, with only two central elements, at similar heights and also obliged them to be quite narrow if the full 6-degree tilt is to be used to move both elements of the wing. To control this area to the extent that the FIA want control, a lot of parameters had to be restricted.
Apart from the above, there can only be one section of car at any particular height for the part of the car ahead of the point 45cm from the front wheel centre axle. This means that the floor cannot slope upwards at a greater rate than the upper surface of the car, the upper surface of the car cannot have any aerodynamic additions at all and such things as the Ferrari nose hole are banned.
Article 3.7.4 is confusing. The area to which it refers is intricate enough:
between 45cm and 1 metre in front of the front wheel centre axle.
between 25cm and 40cm from the car centre line.
and between 7.5cm and 27.5cm above the reference plane.
The rule restricts the amount of bodywork showing onto the longitudinal centre plane to 20000mm squared or less.
It is not immediately clear to what angle the bodywork restriction refers because a longitudinal plane is any plane 90 degrees from the transverse plane. A transverse plane would split the car into top and bottom). However, a longitudinal plane could either refer to the coronal plane (which would split the car into front and rear) or the saggital plane (splitting the car into left and right).
Presumably if it is the coronal plane, then the regulation restricts the amount of bodywork visible from above. If it is the saggital plane, either side could be interpreted as being the side meant by the Article. The trouble is that nothing in the Article indicates which of the two planes is the plane to which the Article applies. Maybe it applies to both...
Someone from the FIA needs to clarify Article 3.7.4 before some hapless technical director decides to go one way and the stewards of a particular venue another. Otherwise we will have a big sticky mess where both sides are saying “I was only following the regulations, guv!”
Article 3.7.5 is better written. It requires wide front wings because the bodywork in that area has to project 95000mm squared or more to the side.
Article 3.7.6 requires the wings to be even wider than Article 3.7.5 does (between 84cm and 90cm) because from above, there has to be at least 28000mm squared of bodywork visible in that area. It also obliges the ends of the wings to be 10cm or less above the reference plane, thus lowering the ends of the front wing. It is the only part of the wing that needs to be one continuous surface from underneath, opening the possibility of under-wing aero in the more central parts of the front wing. However, the next Article means the front wing ends have to be either narrow or short – a maximum of 15000mm squared can be visible from above, and cross-sections of that area would also have that restriction as regards bodywork visible from above.
Protruberances on any part of the central nosecone and front tub section are prevented by Article 3.7.8 because apart from cameras and camera housings approved by the FIA, there can be only one piece of bodywork in that section and it has to have at least part of it within 12.5cm of the reference plane.
Join me another time when I discuss the implications of Article 3.8 and beyond.
* - The Overtaking Working Group wrote the regulation changes, instituted by Max Mosley and rubber-stamped by the World Motor Sport Council.
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