Quote:
Originally Posted by wnut
Paddy Lowe is currently the Executive Technical Director of Mercedes F1, he has I think the largest technical staff and biggest budget in F1.
All expenses at some stage he will have to justify to the Mercedes Board.
Why would he have an interest in undertaking an R&D arms race in a new area?
Anything that is "active" has to be more complicated and expensive than a "passive" system.
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And under the current system, they spend what they have.
Which would be better? Them spending what they have on arcane aero stuff, or on a system to keep the tires more or less square to the ground and in contact with it under any circumstance?
The second one can trickle down to road cars at some point. The first one never would.
Then we get to the point where I think road technology benefits from stuff learned in racing and you feel there is no connection between the two spheres. Mercedes says they are learning stuff they can use on the road. I remember back in the '80's, Honda said they put their young engineers on the F1 stuff. They gave two reasons. One was that the young engineers didn't have any preconceived notions, which allowed them to dream up more innovative stuff. Not necessarily any connection to road cars there. The second was that they felt it was a fabulous classroom for training their engineers, who later went onto designing their road cars. Definitely some transfer there.
Whether there is or is not a connection is fundamental to the question of whether F1 should go off exploring new technology because, while expensive, there is a benefit outside of F1, or if it just creates a new avenue for spending.