I’ve been meaning for a while to write about diffusers and the long-running argument surrounding them, but have found on each attempt that I’ve not had the strength to make it to the end. The recent news that the whole sorry affair is finally, finally over, though, means at least I’ll only have to talk about them once.
What’s a diffuser, then? Here’s an early-season picture of the McLaren MP4-24:
The diffuser is the horizontal tray with blades hanging down from it that can be seen underneath the rear wing. Its role is to manage air flowing underneath the car in a way that creates downforce, the downward pressure exerted on a car by air that pushes the car into the ground and so gives the tyres more grip.
The more air it can manage, the more downforce a diffuser can help to create, so for this season new rules have been introduced limiting the size and therefore the internal volume of the diffuser. The McLaren pictured above carries a literal interpretation of the rules, which state that the diffuser is limited to a width of 1000mm, a length of 350mm and a height of 175mm. In total, seven teams designed diffusers that, broadly speaking, look and work like the one in that picture. These seven teams then got very upset when three other teams designed more effective diffusers using a loophole in the regulations that everybody had used the year before.
The ‘Diffuser Three’ – Williams, Toyota and Brawn – didn’t have exactly the same designs but were all, in different ways, taking advantage of rules regarding where bodywork can and can’t be located on a Formula One car to increase the area of the car acting as a diffuser and the amount of air being directed to it. At a meeting of Formula One’s Overtaking Working Group (OWG), a body of team members and officials tasked with finding ways to promote more passing during races, it was apparently agreed that the loophole would not be exploited, leaving cars designed in the spirit of the intended regulations. Williams, Toyota and Brawn were not represented at that meeting.
Those three teams, Brawn in particular, have shown staggering pace in the early part of the 2009 season while the established powerhouses of Ferrari, BMW, Renault and McLaren haven’t. As pre-season testing had suggested this would be the case, three of those teams (not McLaren) were primed and ready to lodge a protest with the sport’s governing body, the FIA, against the legality of the trick diffuser teams as soon as the first official race meeting began and the stewards in Australia had declared all competing cars legal (as had the FIA’s technical delegates pre-season, as would the stewards in Malaysia). Red Bull joined in too. As for why certain teams didn’t protest, consider that Force India and McLaren share an engine supplier with Brawn, and Toro Rosso are the sister team of Red Bull.
The FIA International Court of Appeal, after hearing the arguments for and against, delivered this barely penetrable verdict. For those who lack the strength to digest and understand all of that, a quick summary of the seven cases made against the trick diffuser cars and the FIA’s verdict:
1) Ferrari and Renault argued that the stewards had been too vague in demonstrating why the trick diffusers were legal. The FIA ruled that while more clarity may have been preferable, the stewards had done enough, and if they’d really been that vague, how had everyone been able to prepare comprehensive appeals against their decision? Dismissed.
2) All appealing teams submitted that the defendants had not sent their new design concepts to the FIA for approval. There is no rule stating that they must do so, only one advising that they can if the legality of the concept needs to be clarified, and the design concepts aren’t actually new at all. Dismissed.
3) It was argued that the diffusers increased the wake of turbulent air behind the Brawn, Williams and Toyota, making it harder to follow closely and pass and so defeating the purpose of the diffuser rules. Nobody was able to present evidence in support of this, though somebody was able to demonstrate that it wasn’t true. Dismissed.
4) The diffusers and the surrounding area are in direct contravention of rules relating to the dimensions and location of such devices, said the protesting teams. No they aren’t, said the FIA. Dismissed.
5) “Alright,” said Red Bull, “Brawn GP have used infinite precision (a mathematical concept that the chap writing this is yet to grasp. If you can put infinite precision in layman’s terms, a certain racing blogger wants to hear from you) in their design, and the rules say they can’t do that.” Red Bull, though, couldn’t prove it. The FIA scrutineers could disprove it. Dismissed.
6) Renault and the game but increasingly desperate Red Bull alleged that they had asked whether similar concepts to those used by the diffuser gang were legal and told they weren’t. The FIA said they had been questioned, but none of the questions asked related to the issues being discussed today, which had never been ruled upon. Dismissed.
7) Denying the appeals would mean the seven teams operating in the ’spirit’ of the rules would have to spend fortunes developing parts similar to those used by the three rogue operators as well as modifying their existing parts to accommodate the new diffuser designs, going against the FIA’s stated aim of reducing costs. While this is undoubtedly true, it was decided that how much things cost isn’t really in any way connected to how legal they are (as an aside, most of these fortunes were already being spent prior to the hearing by teams anticipating that the appeal would fail). Dismissed.
All fairly conclusive. You might be thinking that if the rules were written in a certain spirit then the OWG teams had a right to appeal and a case of sorts. You might change your mind when you’re told that Ross Brawn, Brawn GP’s top man, made the OWG aware a year ago that the diffuser regulations could be exploited but had his suggestion that the rules be tidied up rejected by other teams.
Why the protest, then, and why did it take so long to sort out? For Ferrari, Renault and BMW, the easiest, quickest and cheapest way to take their uncompetitive cars and make them racy is to disadvantage the opposition. Ferrari are past masters; in late 2003, the Bridgestone-shod Italian team appealed successfully against the legality of the Michelin tyres used by their main rivals, in spite of how the French company had been using the same tyres since the beginning of 2002 without trouble. In 2002 Ferrari had wiped the floor with the competition. In 2003, they were on the verge of defeat until Michelin were forced into a fundamental redesign of their rubber.
Three teams had shown strongly, their diffusers were the common thread between them, and simply developing your own trick diffuser wouldn’t do that much to close the gap – while you’re developing that, the other teams are finding speed in other areas. No, the thing to do was to remove their common advantage while working on improving your own car, in the hope that you’d gain speed, the Diffuser Three would lose it and everyone would meet in the middle. It’s a pretty sad indictment of Formula One when instead of celebrating and emulating those who push the rules to their limit in the quest for speed, other teams instead try to find ways to punish them.
Red Bull were in it for different reasons. Red Bull do not have a trick diffuser, and are the team with the most work to do to incorporate one, needing a redesign of the rear suspension to create space for it. Red Bull have qualified on pole position and won a race this season. Had trick diffusers been declared illegal, they’d have had much less design work to do and might have had a clear shot at the world title against handicapped Brawns and Toyotas.
Might have. If they’re brilliantly quick with a regular, spirit-of-the-rules diffuser, then is the diffuser such a big deal? Would the teams with one suffer too greatly without one? A diffuser is a part of a car’s aerodynamic package. It’s not a magic wand, nor a golden ticket for a tour of the speed factory. You want more proof? The Williams, after a promising start, has faded into the upper midfield. In Nico Rosberg’s hands it’s the fourth-fastest car in Formula One, and in Kazuki Nakajima’s hands it’s sixth or seventh.
Ross Brawn is said to be glad that the row over diffusers dominated the early part of the season, because it meant people weren’t looking at other areas of his car that he felt gave a greater performance gain. The pace of the Williams and Red Bull show that it’s time to start looking. Yes, trick diffusers make a difference, otherwise they wouldn’t be on there, but they aren’t the be-all-end-all. Red Bull designed a good car without one. Williams designed a competent car with one. A good car is exactly that – a good car, not just a good floor section at the rear – and it’s time that everyone, especially those connected to Renault, BMW and Ferrari, acknowledged that. In making a wholly correct decision, something not at all in keeping with their recent behaviour, and refusing to accede to the demands of the protestors, the governing body have gone some way to kick-starting things.
[...] The manufacturer teams and the Red Bull teams remain united by a common goal, although that goal changes a little with every passing day and that unity will dissolve the instant one manufacturer spies the chance to score points over another. The issue most frequently raised, that of the FIA’s desire for a budget cap against FOTA’s desire to bring costs down by themselves without being told what they can afford to spend, is in fact FOTA’s way of highlighting that they want a say in the way the sport is governed. I may or may not get into more detail on the whole affair at some point, depending on whether I can sit in front of the keyboard at a reasonable time of day and conclude that I’m not actually as sick as a chip of hearing about FOTA after all, but in brief, they’re nuts. Self-governance will work only for as long as it takes one set of engineers to spot a loophole and exploit it, and should you find yourself disagreeing with that, consider this. [...]
[...] and bodywork have been lowered, and the rear of the car has been modified to make better use of the double diffuser (banned for 2011, but very much a part of the 2010 regulations) that had to be hurriedly shoehorned [...]