Brawn, Toyota and Williams Diffuser are Legal

After a series of appeals and protests, FIA Court of Appeal (ICA) has rejected it all and concluded the “double decker” designs comply the 2009 regulations.

This diffuser had gone through the race stewards both in Australia and Malaysia, now ICA.  Meaning that these three teams will have peaceful mind on the following race.

On the other hand, Ferrari having a headache as they are going to modified the existing F60 design.  They reckon that with the “double decker” design, the race machine will gain 0.5 second a lap.  However, it going to take time and involve R & D investment, we will not be seeing the revamped Ferrari in this coming China GP, probably in Catalunya, Spain or Monte Carlo which is 2 to 3 races from now, the soonest.

What will happen to the rest of the teams, perhaps they are not as rich as Ferrari, but I believe that with the clearance given by the FIA, the rest of the field will at least invest some time to improve their car on these.  We’ll see…

Protest on taller diffuser

Brawn, Toyota and Williams managed to exploit the rule of Formula One having to run a taller diffuser.   Clearly it must have certain extend of advantages.

 

The rest of the teams have objected, questioning legality on their designs.

The stewards must now decide whether to allow the cars in question to race in their current form.

New in 2008 Season - Summary

There are several changes made by FIA, all the changes are work towards cost saving, safety, enhance racing experience, enhance viewer experience, and environmental issue...

Let's glance through one by one:

1. The infamous Saturday "fuel burning" round in qualifying reduce from 15 minutes to 10 minutes, and there will be no refueling. It will be all out to create more excitement.
   


2. Rookies get extra "young driver training days" if they not raced a Formula One car in the preceding two years or tested a car for more than four days in that period. These training will fall outside the Friday and Saturday practice limitation.
   


3. Electronic driver aids such as traction control and braking assistants will be banned. The drivers are on their own rather than relying on the technology.
   


4. A standard Electronic Control Unit (ECU) supplied by Microsoft and McLaren will be used by all teams.
   


5. Teams will be allowed to go unpenalised on their first engine change of the season. This is intended to ensure that a minor glitch doesn’t compromise a championship campaign. All subsequent engine failures will receive the usual 10 grid-place penalty.
   


6. Gearboxes must now last four races (calculated as the Saturday and Sunday of a Grand Prix), and failures will result in five grid-place penalty.
   


7. T-Car (spare car) banned, teams are now rely on two cars per race.
   


8. All cars now have the sides of their cockpits raised 20 mm and lengthened in order to improve drivers’ head protection. (thanks to the 2007 Albert's Park incident between David Coulthard and Alexander Wurz)
   



9. There are further restrictions on parts that teams are allowed to develop under the current engine freeze, which will help to switch development programmes towards the Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems (KERS) that will come into effect in 2009 under the FIA’s long-term plan to make the sport more eco-relevant. Hand-in-hand with this, teams must use fuels which have a minimum of 5.75 per cent content from biological sources.

F1 rule changes for 2008 season

Click on image to view the actual size

An earlier post from FIA http://bcosurich.wordpress.com/2007/11/27/f1-2008-regulations-as-proposed-on-2005/