The 2014 cars look a little odd

Greetings Internet,

Here we are on the eve of the first test of the season, well at least it was when this document was started - actual release may vary. In the run up to this important milestone on the path towards Australia in March a few teams have released their new designs for 2014, and from those releases everything looks a little odd... It was to be expected that the re-profiled nose sections would dominate the shape of the grid but it has lead to some very interesting remarks across the internet. However one of the most promising things about this significant redesign is that it forces those designers and engineers to come up with new solutions and new interpretations. This means that there is going to be a lot of variation on the grid this year, especially given what we've seen so far - which is always a good thing, back in 2008 if the cars had no livery it would be very difficult to tell which one belonged to which team. Now this problem has been resolved - replaced by another one... the cars look weird... Two seasons ago we had the onset of the stepped nose, some teams were more subtle with it than others, Sauber and Ferrari had a very angular step, Force India and Mercedes had a platypus nose while McLaren had neither. All those designs seemed odd at first, but we got used to them over time, and some like the Lotus interpretation started to look alright. However I sense that the same process of acceptance regarding the newest nose designs is going to be a lot longer...

So here are the car release pictures so far... from those teams who have decided to unveil their designs before the first test begins tomorrow... ish.

Force India

Force India were the first team to unveil a picture of their car, and looking at the sole image which had clearly been photoshopped to within an inch of its life, things looked good. The most striking difference is that they had refreshed their livery after it had remained static for so long, paired with one of the strongest driver pairings on the grid and definitely in the mid-field seemed promising. What the team had done was to take their image directly from the side which meant their interpretation of the nose-cone design remained hidden. It can be seen from the profile of the nose that there is something going on there, but the angle of the shot and the after-effects put on the car make it difficult to discern what. On the surface it looks a lot more aggressive, but so did last years Sauber when those first images came out and the actual car didn't quite have the same amount of presence. So we shall have to wait and see if Force India follows that pattern when the trackside photos come out of Jerez.

Williams

After Force India released a photoshop special, Williams went one betted and released a sponsor free CGI rendering of their car. This time Williams decided to show their new nose design... and it was at this point in time that the internet erupted. Because it looks mismatched, an anomalous protrusion from the front of the car which looks out of place, the sort of thing you'd go to the doctor about and ask for a biopsy. But this is what the technical regulations promoted - a low narrow nose attached to a wider and higher section of the chassis responsible for housing the suspension. However this image may work in the opposite manner to the Force India release, because the actual car with sponsors if Williams still have any and a complete livery might highlight contours that the rendering doesn't show. Therefore the - protrusion - may blend in to the rest of the body better and look more purposeful when it is on track.

McLaren

McLaren were the first team to do a proper reveal, complete with drivers and without too much image manipulation. Before we get to the shape of the nose which again is another interpretation, the other talking point is the lack of any distinct livery, since Vodafone and McLaren parted ways over the winter the team don't have a title sponsor - or any sponsors on the car. This suggests that despite signing up drivers before the end of the 2013 season, there are still many business deals to be done. As a result the livery is rather plain - and just uses several shades of grey, making it similar in many respects to the factory Mercedes team cars. But as this may well just be a work in progress design, what they show up in Australia with may differ significantly. Onto the nose then, and this nodule seems a lot more purposeful than the Williams version, and the wing supports are quite nice - even if they look a little like nostrils from the front. But there is the problem that the end of the nose doesn't quite seem to match with the lines of the main chassis, and the edges don't line up. It is a minor detail but an ever so slightly irritating one - but as some third-party designs online demonstrate - a clever livery can sculpt the nose to look much sharper and blend in with the rest of the car.

Lotus

More CGI again, and in the alternative world of Lotus' twitter use - they twitter-bombed McLaren (if that is indeed such a term). Because as McLaren were doing a big online video reveal - Lotus posted their rendering on twitter... very sneaky. The world then stared at this image for quite a while, questioning whether Lotus were having another laugh, or whether the rendering was pushed through to spoil McLaren's parade leaving some of the details a little rough. But when further images were released it became clear that Lotus were serious and had gone in a very different direction with the design. The car has two noses... one of which is longer than the other - which is going to irritate me and anyone with an OCD complex all season long. This has been done because you can only have one designated nose, and any other chassis bodywork must be at least 500mm back from this point. Therefore one prong is the nose, and the other has to be 500mm shorted - it's a very clever interpretation of the rules, one which may force a re-write for 2015 so the innovation should be applauded. And if those noses were allowed to be equal it would be the best looking design so far.

Ferrari

With arguably the most powerful driver pairing and a huge amount of resources, big things were expected from Ferrari - they have something to prove in 2014, that they can really challenge for the big prize at the end. So when this design filtered through the media we were all very surprised with what was in front of us all - like the Lotus it took some time to sink in because it is quite different. In some respects the sloped nose without the strange protrusion is a much smoother design but the slope angle seems very disjointed from the rest of the car. Almost as if it has melted or someone really fat fell on the wax wind-tunnel model before it was scanned into the computer - but the design is quite deliberate, and I can see this being one of those that we get used to faster than the others... Even if it looks strange to us all now. Because a static car can look different to one travelling at speed even if they are intrinsically the same thing, so I shall withhold all criticism until the images from Jerez come through.

Sauber

Sauber only released their design yesterday, and is the most recent of the car releases immediately before the start of testing tomorrow when the rest of the field will be unveiled. Like Force India some clever photography and image filters make the car look more aggressive than it really is, while concealing the complete nose profile which has been a sticking point among fans. From the angle available the nose does look to be one of the better interpretations of the rule - aesthetically speaking - performance is another matter. As with the majority of the other designs thus far, the rest of the car remains largely unchanged with the exception of the airbox shapes above the driver. Sauber have come into some criticism for their driver choices by the folk of the internet mainly because Gutierrez can be erratic at times and Sutil has become boring in recent seasons - but their least inspired decision so far is the livery. All the others so far have at least made some updates and improvements to the design but Sauber haven't - barring sponsors it is borderline identical to the 2013 car. There is a sense that the mid-field balance of power might have been passed back to Force India... or maybe even Williams.

Torro Rosso

This release literally occurred minutes ago and unlike some of the other designs, toro-rosso have gone with a much sharper shape to the main chassis leading up to the nosecone which descends smoother than the likes of Ferrari or Williams. It does seem to bear a much greater resemblance to the Sauber design where the overhanging sections of the nose at the sides form the supporting struts for the front wing. Which makes the whole thing look tidier than the front of the Williams without the flaring nostril look of the McLaren. It seems that of those running the single pointed nose Toro Rosso and Sauber have come up with the prettier solutions - even if their liveries remain largely unchanged by it all. Of course we don't really know what Force India have done or the others that are yet to unveil what they have done, but those fears of 2014 cars being hideous has been dispelled in several cases. The jury is still out on others...


Overall the new cars are very different, and the picture will be a lot clearer over the coming days when testing gets underway in Spain. Of course between initial release and the start of the season in Melbourne it is entirely possible the there will be some significant changes to the shape, style and overall approach to the front nose design. Teams will learn from each other in Jerez, they will learn from the telemetry data and relative pace whether their design is any good. Naturally that relative pace doesn't mean too much at this stage, but it helps teams shape and reshape the cars to extract more downforce and tyre life from the cars. It is a very important test, which may cause problems who like me, are not heading off to Spain because it is well out of both out budgets.

2014 - A Step Into the Unknown

Greetings Internet,

As some of you may have noticed we have inadvertently stumbled into a new year, and by this point in time you, the people of the internet and potentially the real world (where ever that is...) have discovered that the novelty has worn off. Leaving you with the cold realisation that this new year is just as dull as the last 12 months we were all forced to endure - it's the same old routines and tedium merely branded with a different date. I know what both of you audience members are thinking (even that is probably an exaggeration and I am probably only talking to a list of web-crawlers and search engines.... in that case Hello Google) the last thing that you want in that world of disappointment is another rant from this point of the internet... But I was never particularly good at giving people what they want. Or caring too much about that predicament...

So what is the purpose of this specific digital outburst, well I wanted to go over the plethora of changes we've got coming in the new season with the first official test in three weeks time. A test that might be a little problematic considering that none of the teams have actually released their new car, so I can foresee everyone turning up to see Alonso and Hamilton just running around Jerez instead. Caterham don't even have any drivers at the moment officially contracted to drive, and they seem the closest to having something to test. All of this is a repercussion of firstly the utterly desperate state of funding within the sport, and the rather significant technical and sporting regulations we are going to be encountering this season.

The Engines

As it has been known for a while, the change to the engine regulations are touted as the most significant change from 2013 to now. It was decided that having big angry V10's was a bad idea, so they were downgraded to V8's - and now even that has been deemed excessive, replaced with 1.5L V6's. On the surface that seems like a puny amount of power to be placing in the highest discipline of single seater motorsport, considering there is a 2.5L V6 sitting on the drive of Blog HQ - and although watching Raikkonen start the season in 4WD truck with only 149hp might be... different, it seems wrong. But these engines will be turbocharged which adds a very interesting dynamic to power delivery, producing a hell of a lot more torque (and that is a hell of a lot in metric units). This will make the cars more difficult to drive - or so we are told, but come Australia the engineers will have fixed that, they always do - because of huge amounts of potential wheelspin even in third and maybe fourth gear (allegedly). The more cynical among you may suggest that all these added details may be exaggerations made by drivers and teams based on estimations ran through their simulators, we won't really know how the powertrain will influence driving stability until the first car starts testing.

However all this doomsaying about impossibly difficult cars might prove to be very interesting, because if the cars are much more challenging to drive then it will backfire dramatically on the teams who have brought in drivers for money. You see, hopefully weaknesses in driving ability will be exacerbated by this development and make them more error-prone, thus forcing teams to re-think the decision making process in driver selection. Perhaps this is why Sirotkin hasn't been shoehorned into Sauber with quite the same amount of haste as it was promised mid season... or why Chilton hasn't been immediately confirmed at Marussia. The knock on effect of this might be that the teams have to pay more attention to talent, and give them the kick up the proverbial backside they need to sort out the insane budget escalations.

The V6 isn' the only alteration to the powertrain of the 2014 grid, KERs has been given a complete overhaul making it much more powerful than it ever has been. The allocation has also been significantly increased - from 6s per lap to 30 seconds (so the majority of the A1 Ring when we get there...). All of this has meant that the system needed to be renamed, several highly techincal boffins went into a room for many, many hours (some may not have made it out) and in the end KERs has been changed to ERS... genius. I wonder how long that meeting went on for.

Tyres

Ah yes, the source of so much controversy in 2013, the tyres are also up for renewal in 2014 which is another influence of the redevelopment of engine regulations. Any of the incarnations of tyre that were dished out in the previous year are apparently going to disintegrate under the higher torque loads delivered by the turbo-charged power units (although they did that before anyway). Therefore Pirelli - probably sick of being complained at - have made the compounds more durable to compensate, so tyre conservation should be less of a problem and by more down to chassis design and driver style to limit wheelspin in preserving the rubber. The actual tyre rules seem not to have changed from last season to this one,  where two compounds will be brought to each race and in the dry both must be used on a Sunday afternoon, and the top 10 start on the set they set their fastest Q3 time on.

Aerodynamic Changes

Every now and again the aerodynamic design limits get modified slightly, generally around the front of the car - after 2008 these limits were modified with a machete - but this latest set is a lot more subtle. Since that monumental reconfiguration in 2009, the height of the nose-cone has been under constant scrutiny - and in 2012 we ended up with some strange stepped nose designs. In 2014 the maximum height of the nose is being lowered, primarily for safety, because a low nose has a smaller chance of riding over a wheel and ending on top of the car in front. A primary example was the 2011 Abu-Dhabi GP when Liuzzi parked his Force India on top of Schumacher's Mercedes, and a similar incident occurred in this year's GP2 race. Naturally this causes the problem of risking a driver taking a car to the head - which is not ideal. Initial concept drawings of what this would look like looked ... different, shall we say - but other artisitic impressions make the nose sections look more like those we saw on the 2009 Brawn GP car.

The front and rear wing dimensions are also up for modification, which is about time really - the amount of endplates causing punctures has been to high, and the slightest of contact can destroy a race. A recent example being Hamilton squeezing between two cars at the Japanses GP off the line, and brushing Vettel's front wing - ultimately leading to him retiring the car. A similar thing happened to Vettel in Malaysia with Karthekeyan's HRT resulting in the German calling the Indian a cucumber... so in essence narrower front wings should prevent salad vegetables from encroaching on the sport. But the idea is once more to remove downforce, by narrowing the front wing and taking out a beam from a shallower rear wing the cars should be harder to drive. Additionally it theoretically helps to minimised the aero wake problem prevent cars following closely without destroying their tyres in the process.

A Double Points Finale

There are times when you wonder what on earth the people in the FIA have been smoking... this is certainly one of them - Martin Brundle summed up the reaction to this most unusual ruling perfectly saying that it fixes a problem which doesn't exist. It is such a stupid idea - effectively devaluing every other race of the season saying it isn't as important as the final round... which conveniently has been passed back to the very rich venue of Abu Dhabi (obviously a coincidence). Drivers don't like the idea, the internet was all but ready to start burning effigies at the idea, because it is nonsensical. Then race promoters started pitching in, and rightly so, because the FIA is effectively placing their race at a lower significance... yet as of this point in time the decision has not been reversed. If the rule was in place for all of the previous championship seasons it was calculated that very little would have changed... Vettel would still be infuriatingly dominant, as would have Schumacher. The only recent championship that would have been affected is 2008, where Massa would be champion instead of Hamilton (at which point the BBC would start throwing bricks through Bernie's windows due to their Lewis worship at the time). So that begs the question, why? It wouldn't change anything in a season where one driver is dominant, which is one of the things people don't like at the moment, and it would distort a close, competitive year. It fails on all counts.

But... varied points do exist in other championships, categories like the WEC and V8 Supercars (at least it used to) have certain races where a larger number of points are on offer. This is because these races are longer and have special significance, like the Le Mans 24hrs or the Bathurst 1000 - and therefore are a greater challenge to win or at least finish. So if F1 want's to justify the ludicrous points change then the format of the final race needs to be changed to make it worth those extra points. One slightly mental idea (may as well since the FIA have already lost the plot on this one) is that this double score event should be twice as long - up to 4hrs (or 8 with red flags) - with a driver change to place test drivers in the car for at least 40 minutes. Yes there are logistical problems with that - i.e. how many points do test drivers score and does that affect championship places, and fuel and tyre resources would need to be extended but those are only minor problems. However the Indy 500 can last around 4hrs (with a lot of safety cars and only four corners per lap...) so one driver might be able to manage.... just.

Individual Driver Numbers

Unlike the frankly stupid double points rule - this seems like a much better idea, it's something that exists in NASCAR and some types of bike racing (whatever that is) where a driver picks a number and effectively owns it for his or her F1 career. It should make drivers more identifiable (if unique helmets weren't enough) especially when those stewards message banners come up: "car 12 under investigation for something" because we'd all know which driver took number 12. There is some opposition to this on the internet, citing the fact that those of us who've seen every race since some arbitrary time in history know who is who already - even if Vettel tries to conceal his identity with a different hat every other day - so why bother. Well the thing is why not, I like the idea it almost injects some personality into a very anaesthetised sport where press conferences are scripted by PR agents and drivers and burned at the stake for having an opinion (although Di Resta and Maldonado were well out of line on more than one occasion in their interviews and thus deserved criticism). Besides there is an automatic bonus point waiting for any driver who turns up in Melbourne with the number 42 emblazoned on their car.

The process of assigning these numbers works in the following manner, each driver picks three numbers in order of preference from 2-99 (#1 is reserved for the champion if he wants it) i.e. Bottas has already lay claim to 77 with 17 or 11 as backups. Numbers are then assigned based on championship position and preference, so if someone further up the table also wanted #77 then Bottas would have to settle for his second or third options. The allocations thus far can be found Here (still no #42 yet - A Kobayashi return with #42 would result in so many points).

Limited Fuel

We're back on the strange ideas list with this one, the intentions behind it are very valid and reasonable but I think the actual consequences of it might be less than ideal. Like so many of the other adjustments it is a legacy of the engine regulations, in an attempt to make the new generation of engines more efficient and less thirsty. Each car will only be permitted to carry a certain amount of fuel - an amount that may not be sufficient to complete the race completely flat out... and this is where the problem comes in. If a car can't finish the race then it will be forced into a fuel conservation mode, so instead of saving tyres throughout the race it will be fuel instead.

But is 2014 still worth waiting for...

Well it better be, if at the end of the first race we are all throwing various objects at the television in frustration then the plans would have all failed. But in the intervening period it is worth looking forward two because anything can happen, there is always the chance that someone could do a 'Brawn GP' and come up with the ultimate solution to the regulations and dominate the series. It that happens to be a lesser team from the mid-field there development pace could make the second half of the year very interesting as everyone else catches up. If it is Red Bull who draw the trump card then we will see nothing of them all season long such are the resources they have to continually gain pace. Several drivers have been pointing out the potential for reduced reliability, due to the lack of testing on the new engines, Sutil in particular has said it would 'damage' sport. However I think it adds even more unpredictability to the series, having a week long lead doesn't automatically mean a win and huge haul of points 50 laps later. More accidents, retirements and huge plumes of smoke from detonated engines sounds beautiful. After the final part of 2013 we need some action and dynamism in the sport where strategy isn't decided three weeks earlier in a dark computer room. Constantly changing on track events force reactions and creativity on the pit wall, not to mention how the drivers will cope. Naturally I shall keep my expectations high for this season, and hope not to see them dashed once more. Even if they are the BTCC and V8 Supercars look mightily brilliant in their pre-season updates, so there will be brilliant racing somewhere.