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Comment by Andrew_nenakhov | Hacker News Reader

Watched a lot of F1 in 90s/00s, stopped after 2017 season. Current regulations make it very predictable. Most offending rules are:

- limit on testing means that whoever makes the best car after regulations change will win until next regulations change (2010..2013 Red Bull, 2014.. today Mercedes), others have very limited means to catch up

- scoring system introduced in late 00s rewards reliability over racing, and gives miniscule reward for 1st place: now you get 25 for P1, 18 for P2, and in 80s it was 9 or 10 for P1, 6 for P2, and in 1980s only 11 of 17 results counted towards championship, so drivers would often take more risks to get for results. Now they just drive home safely.

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> Now they just drive home safely.

Some of the on-track incidents yesterday (July 5th) suggest that this is not the whole story, and may not be accurate.

Limiting on testing is just taking away the unique Ferrari advantage. Previously they just took their design out on their private racetrack next to the lab. Now they have to test as all the others: virtually in computer simulations. And for a short time on the track.

It's much more interesting to do the simulations virtually. Some even do the windtunnel testing now virtually. But only the richest.

So how do you explain that now after each regulation change and until the next, one team wins every constructor and driver title?

Previously, dominance was never that total, not even during Schumacher/Ferrari era (and Schumacher was way better driver than Hamilton). But since 2010, no competing team is able to catch up.

On paper it looks like Mercedes are dominant and have been since the V6 engine era. For sure the first couple of years they had a massive lead.

But the stats disguise the fight; the fact that Mercedes have won didn't mean their position wasn't earned, frankly they've had a fair slice of luck in several races. For the last two or three years one could easily argue that Ferrari had the means to take them on and beat them, but their campaigns have unravelled for various reasons. Many races they've had to earn that win and many seasons where there was a fight throughout.

The fact that Maclaren has vanished into obscurity despite originally having a Merc engine, and RedBull and Ferrari getting in others faces so often has actually allowed Mercedes to keep their head down and get on with bringing home their maximum potential points haul per race.

It's the other way around. The richest teams use actual windtunnels. Correlation between reality and CFD has ruined cars in the past.

It is neither. All teams big or small use a wind tunnel. Simulation and regulation limits on computation mean that a virtual only development program is impossible. Virgin Racing tried it a while back and flopped completely. What some teams do though is use outside wind tunnels owned by others, like another team or Toyota Motorsport in Germany

  25 vs 18 = 1.39x
   9 vs 6  = 1.50x
  10 vs 6  = 1.67x

For anyone curious.

For p2 it's even worse:

18 vs 15 = 1.20x

6 vs 4 = 1.5x

There were years when not all results counted - each driver had to discard the four worst results or something like that. That favored "win or crash" drivers over reliability.

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