Quote:
Originally Posted by Casper
Name me five developments that have come out of F1 and into the production mainstream for road cars in the last ten years, make it twenty years if you like. I have heard this argument so many times it is like a cracked record and has little or no basis in reality.
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The counter argument is also a broken record. Take something that bears a passing resemblance to something that was later developed in racing but occurred first and declare 'that wasn't developed in racing.'
1. Flappy paddle gearboxes. No, I'm not talking about some 1901 preselect system. I'm talking about a dry clutch operated by software, not a driver's foot. It cost Ferrari a lot of races before they got it working right.
2. MASSIVE improvement in tire construction and compound and tread designs to reduce aquaplaning. Oh, right, that happened entirely through normal R&D budgets and had nothing to do with anything learned in racing.
3. Active suspension (until it got banned).
4. I'm not going to limit myself to F1 because I think valuable things are learned in other top-level racing series. Tubocharging. Yes, aeroplanes had them before. Locomotives had them before. Trucks had them before. You didn't see them appearing on road cars until after they were used at Indy and they figured out how to achieve decent boost and lag control.
5. Multilink suspension that doesn't suddenly & unpredictably throw the car off the road.
6. High performance diesel engines. ACO couldn't even keep up with the rapid development that occurred on an 80+ year old technology once it got into the hands of racing engineers, the development was occurring so rapidly.
7. Active differential development. Now banned.
I think only going back 20 years is pointless, as for the last 20 years we have been in the spec car era, and any innovation is by definition agains the rules.