[Rules] The Red Bull British GP appeal Thread

[Peter Mallett]

Originally Posted by Greem

That was "Vnuk", which threatened to end motorsport in Europe entirely by forcing everyone to have liability insurance even for track-only vehicles.

Close enough

Indeed it was Vnuk my apologies I was still drying out from Silverstone.

[Peter Mallett]

Originally Posted by Taxi645

Well it is of course a new situation for everyone with the budget caps and then you have the perfect cocktail of a lot damage between mostly the same teams within two races. Throughout the seasons the pendulum will swing back and forth. The question is will be the teams be able to accept the large swings of that pendulum like we have seen the last two races?

To put things into context, when we will be under the 135 million cap in a few years. It’s not that the damages is part of the full 135 million. Every teams have fixed cost you have to make which are not car performance related but just cost to run an F1 team. Say of that 135,- roughly half of that amount is performance related than you’re talking 70,-. So if Red Bull for instance had 3.5 million in damages the last two races, that’s a quite considerable 5% of their performance related budget cap margin. If they also have to replace engines because of the crashes and suffer back of the grid penalties while your competitor, who’s driver caused the collision, only get’s 5 places than things start to add up.

I see the point about litigation, but will the team bosses be able to cope with the swings back and forth and accept the current situation? I doubt it very much. So is suspect some damages scheme will be though out.

The idea of basing damage fund payment partially upon penalty point system is:
1 Have some correlation between driving safely and accountability for damages to others.
2 Create a stronger incentive for drivers and team bosses for the drivers to behave on track.
3 Make the correlation strong enough to have some effect and appease the team bosses without making it so high that it triggers claims, protests etc.


So for instance every team pays a yearly 3 million base contribution to the damages fund. Then on top of that each team pays the accumulated amount of penalty points by their drivers that year divided by 3 for instance. So example:
A teams drivers accumulated 15 penalty points over that year; the team pays 3 plus 15/3 = 8 million to the damages fund.
Another teams drivers accumulated 6 penalty points then it’s; 3 plus 6/3 = 5 million into the damages fund.
The difference would probably be high enough to appease the team bosses and perhaps have some effect on driving behaviour, but not so high it would be worth making a lot of fuss about.

I don’t know, probably a bit too complicated, but I think we will some movement in this area the coming months.

So this budget cap appears to be a case of "be careful what you wish for". That said I would expect these businesses to run insurance to cover much of the costs if they really feel the need. Then again how many times each year does a team destroy a chassis? Who would be an actuary?

[ascarracinguk]

MASSIVE can of worms this....

....attributing blame and then a cost to accidents based on a judgment made from 4 individuals who have been known to make inconsistant decisions.

Whats to stop teams from costing damage differently so they disadvantage their competitors by making them pay a higher price for the damage so their development budget decreases?...will they have to provide reciepts for every nut and bolt?

The silly thing is, the smaller teams have effectively been running under a 'cost cap' for years....the likes of williams, HAAS have to factor in damage becuase they dont have funds or money coming in from sponsors like the top teams.

The other side of this is what happens when a smaller team hits another car....say for instance that was Russell in the Williams instead of Bottas in Hungary....

....how on earth would Williams be able to pay the bill for all that damage.

[Adam43]

I see it is also being said that this is now a problem because of the cost cap. Which just means the top teams now have the same budget issues that the small teams already had.

[chillibowl]

a while back i suggested a mechanism to compensate for race damage but the last couple of weeks have reminded me just how much noise a team makes and only makes when there is an issue that effects them directly. the rest of the time they dont seem to care much.

fair enough...but the question now on my mind is why was race damage caused by another team was not previously part of the budget cap negotiations?

rather, if they had not talked about this previously then that seems to be a massive massive oversight to the point where it must be considered unlikely that it was overlooked during negotiations.

which leave us with the other option...they did talk about it and have already come to some consensus/compromise which essentially means these costs have already been factored into the budget cap level they all subsequently agreed to right?

of course negotiations dont always address every concern but costs of fixing cars seem too large of a topic to have not been considered...so that this issue is coming up now is just typical F1 posturing on an issue that currently affects one team and they are moving to use it as a way to gain advantage over their rivals?

this might just have to be an area where the teams all have to live with the decision they made...and as Adam says deal with it like the small teams always have.

[Richard C]

Originally Posted by ascarracinguk

MASSIVE can of worms this....

....attributing blame and then a cost to accidents based on a judgment made from 4 individuals who have been known to make inconsistant decisions.

Whats to stop teams from costing damage differently so they disadvantage their competitors by making them pay a higher price for the damage so their development budget decreases?...will they have to provide reciepts for every nut and bolt?

The silly thing is, the smaller teams have effectively been running under a 'cost cap' for years....the likes of williams, HAAS have to factor in damage becuase they dont have funds or money coming in from sponsors like the top teams.

The other side of this is what happens when a smaller team hits another car....say for instance that was Russell in the Williams instead of Bottas in Hungary....

....how on earth would Williams be able to pay the bill for all that damage.

Agree on all of this. Its a huge can of worms to try to get others to pay for the damage. It may be "unfair", but it is much more easier to manage and it also distributes the cost over a wider base if you pay for the damage to your own car regardless of who is "at fault".

As you say. A small team "causes" damage to large number of cars at turn one. You can blow a single teams budget in one corner and worst case, force them out of the championship. Or... everyone sucks it up and pays for their own cars.

Richard

[sizzle]

Originally Posted by Adam43

I see it is also being said that this is now a problem because of the cost cap. Which just means the top teams now have the same budget issues that the small teams already had.

[wnut]

Good article on the fuel sampling and whole sorry mess Aston Martin are in regarding the inability to provide a fuel sample - well worth a read.

"In other words, if you stop halfway round your in-lap after qualifying, the FIA will calculate how much fuel you saved by so doing, and thus how much you would have had in the tank if you'd driven round. If the result is less than a litre, you are in trouble.

That rule is not applied to the race itself, as the consensus is that in the hybrid era and with fuel so tight it would not have been right for a driver to lose a win through a lack of sample if he could have parked on the in-lap and kept enough in the tank."

https://au.motorsport.com/f1/news/as...lysis/6641071/

[wnut]

Above in wrong thread. Apologies.

[2 litre Touring Car Star]

Originally Posted by Casper

There is a first time for everything so just because it has not happened in your memory does not mean it can't happen. I'll take this instead of Mercedes winning every time the flag drops. No law has been broken just a set of different circumstances has come about.

How many times would such an accident have to occur for you to start to get frustrated?

[Aysedasi]

For most of us, probably a fair few, after all, Grand Prix racing has been with us for over 70 years now.

But if you're referring to the teams, not many i guess. But they do all enter voluntarily and know that accidents occur in motor racing. Just because a team gets 'frustrated' doesn't mean that rules changes and compensation need to be added to an already complicated mix.

[S griffin]

Exactly, the teams and drivers all know the risk involved and how much cost an accident can occur. And incidents will happen. Things go wrong in all sports, it’s just it’s more expensive when things go wrong in F1.