Ferrari and Merc spend $500m approx. Budget cap is $175m with exceptions like driver salary, top leaders salary, PU.
New wind tunnels, new factories, expensive software projects. All ploughed ahead this year so they don't have to go on the books after 2022.
The engineers on the payroll at the FIA don't have the time/resources/knowledge to judge the legality of these insanely complex powertrains.
All manufacturers were forced earlier this year to provide detailed info about their Energy Recovery Systems, rumors are that Ferrari suspects the Mercedes ERS to make use of loopholes so Ferrari lends their engineers to the FIA to research the data provided on all engines.
Close some of those loopholes with a Technical Directive (Basically a clarification of the rules, which takes immediate effect) and you can slow down your opponents with immediately.
And DAS is made illegal from next year.
Are you saying Ferrari worked with FIA for their sensor cheat last year as well? BTW, none of us on the outside even know what they even cheated on and what the agreement is etc. The theory is that FIA knows there was cheating with the sensors but doesn't have the necessary evidence to prove it.
In F1 you are always left guessing which hidden aspect of the engineering is affecting the outcome of the race.
Making everything open source wouldn’t change anything, but at least from a fan perspective you could really delve into those cool engineering bits. Right now we are left guessing at what the Ferrari engine was doing and how it worked.
The things that are actually resulting in the wins/losses are not even not visible, they are secret! What other sport is like that?
The whole thing came to this end because RedBull guessed what Ferrari were doing.
Perhaps that is why I love F1 over any other sport. I love the technical aspects, the need to push into gray area etc.
I always thought it was more like, Ferrari will always spend gobs of money and a small player can only spend a tenth as much- the amount of money spent will not change- but how can we narrow the gap between the high budget & low budget teams, such that a really awesome low budget team has a chance of catching a high budget team napping.