Time is money we are told. Yet money cannot buy time. Money can attract and retain staff. Enough of it can secure any limited edition collectable Swiss watch yet made, or a Ferrari road car, or new carbon items for one's F1 race car.
Money can purchase you a new wind tunnel, but it cannot buy you more time to use it in conjunction with your glorious simulator and super-computing CFD capabilities. No. The FIA, like so many variables within F1, loves controlling how much time you spend playing with your new toys.
Prior to 2021, the FIA introduced a "65 wind tunnel runs per week" rule to eliminate the 24/7 wind tunnel use of the top teams. Indeed, a couple ran two tunnels at the same time! Then, for 2021, the FIA drooped this to 40 runs per week, and introduced a sliding scale to adjust the percentage of those 40 runs a team could access.
The sliding scale awarded additional time to the lowest finishing teams, while cutting time for the leading teams. As a result of finishing first that year the FIA dialled Mercedes back to 90% of 40 runs leaving them a modest 36 runs per week. Meanwhile, Williams who finished tenth (last) was granted 115% which translates to 46 runs per week. A handy ten additional runs per week compared to Mercedes. Assuming around 48 working weeks in the year that allows Williams an additional 480 runs per year for a potential total of 2,208 wind tunnel runs compared to Mercedes down on a mere 1,728. Ouch!
The neutral point of the sliding scale is finishing 7th in the team standings. That's the team which gets the 100% number of runs (40). The top six all take a hit, with eighth to tenth getting a boost.
Then we work in the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) hours. This is the dark art of mapping surfaces and fluid-flows (in our case high-speed air) and how they interact to provide inverted lift, which is to say downforce rather than take-off inducing lift. On page 94 of the 2024 sporting regulations (released September 2023) is the wonderfully dry definition of computing hours for Restricted Computational Fluid Dynamics (RCFD) Simulations. It runs thus...
...all RCFDs shall be measured in Mega Allocation Unit hours (MAUh) and shall be calculated as follows:
AUh = (NCU * NSS * CCF)/3,600.
Where:
AUh = total number of hours allocated to a CFD solver run.
CCF = Peak processing unit clock frequency in Gigahertz achieved during the CFD solver run.
NCU = Number of processing unit cores used for the solver run.
NSS = Number of solver wall clock seconds elapsed during the solver run.
There is more detail to each section but these are the highlights. This means buying a more powerful processor will gain you nothing. You need to have real smart folk writing dark art spells of great power within your software. These wizards need to ensure each step in the "solver run" uses as few machine cycles as possible to arrive at a trustworthy answer as efficiently as possible. Time not money is once again your enemy. Oh, and just how smart your initial spells and incantations are for enchanting Miss Physics and moving your car in the right direction. Extreme analysis of a dumb idea will only leave you with a better understanding of your unique dumbness...
Then we have the simulator, currently not limited by the FIA, so all the teams have dedicated simulator drivers who work through proposed upgrades in the virtual world before the team commits to developing them for the real world racing cars. Here money can get you an edge in terms of the fidelity of the simulator, but it is still the quality of the team's design thinking, and the ability of the sim driver and engineers to understand what the simulator tells them. At the very edge of the possible it is still a dark art to glean insight from Miss Physics, who with an even hand applies her laws equally to all teams, showing no favour.
Where does this leave our apprentices as they labour in the spell lab? CFD time is limited, and a sliding scale is used for the allocation of wind tunnel session times. If you were taking over a team and wanted as much time as possible in the wind tunnel to arrive with a bang what might cross the mind of your chief wizard? Where do you think you'd like the team to place in the season prior to your takeover? Top six and take a wind tunnel time hit? Or bottom three and get a boost? Or possibly dead last ensuring maximum time boost? That's an idea. Is that how to play the game within the rules?
Do we think that Audi might have put this season in the "steady as she goes" basket to ensure maximal wind tunnel time next season? No one is allowed to start wind tunnel testing on their 2026 cars until the 2nd of January 2025. So who cares about the 2024 or 2025 cars if one is seeking a grand entrance in 2026? Audi have the money for both a top class simulator and CFD computing facilities. Their only point of advantage is to game the system and ensure they are allocated maximal wind tunnel time by the FIA. I know that's what I'd be going.
Consider V. Max and how he reads, and applies, the FIA rules on what happens at the Apex. Everyone else is going: "Well, yes, it is in the rules but we don't like it." That is not V. Max's problem. We only need go back to the remarkable 1932-33 Ashes tour when the English bowlers devised "body line" or fast leg theory bowling to try and defeat Sir Donald Bradman. It was widely considered a highly offensive and dangerous, bowling style. Yet England won with it, much to the fury of the Australians. But it was within the rules...
So... do we think that acting within the rules, Audi would be quite happy for their team in waiting, Stake F1 Team (the artist formally known as Sauber...) to be assuredly dead last to maximise time in that glorious wind tunnel? Time which money cannot buy? They are not cheating to achieve this. They are not filling their tyres with sand or knocking the engines down to four cylinders. No, no need. Simply spend minimal money on the 2024 and 2025 cars and the other teams will simply drive past you while you mutter about how seriously you are focussed on 2026. So no sand-bagging and no "turn it down 5% please" cheeky behind the scenes engineering tricks. No. Simply keep the wallet closed this season, watch everyone else race past you, and day dream of what you're going to do with all those additional sessions in the wind tunnel next season.
Are Audi about to slip-stream directly into the mid-field in 2026? Are they going to, legally, chase a tenth-place finish next season too? By gaming the system could they avoid "Doing a Toyota" and actually win races once they get serious about the racing? We fans are simply going to have to wait and see once they stop gaming the system, and start to play the game.
Max Noble
Learn more about Max and check out his previous features, here
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