04/10/2019
NEWS STORY
With teams admitting unease in terms of the further standardisation of parts, open-source, whereby teams would make their designs of certain components available to rivals, has been suggested as a viable alternative.
The idea appears to be more acceptable than outright standardisation, which some, especially Ferrari, claim compromises the sport's DNA.
"It's quite a new idea and a reasonable amount of chat is going to be needed to turn it from promising concept into a deliverable reality," admits James Allison, but I think it's worthy of exploring.
"I think it will take a decree of patience because anything that's open source - imagine we're coming up to 2021 - everyone designs up to the wire and then releases and goes racing so you couldn't sit there waiting for the open sources design to come from a competitor, thinking I won't do that myself, I'll just wait for it to appear on the internet, because by the time it appeared it would be too late.
"So really you're talking about a system that will build up over the seasons and a database of data that will effectively mean that the best design eventually percolates through all the teams and it ceases to be an area where any of us would particularly want to spend development money because a good design is out there, but that's the thing that will require a little bit of patience, but I think it is a fairly robust way - if you have that patience - of making progress."
"Red Bull are supportive of the open source proposal," added Red Bull's chief engineer, Paul Monaghan. "What parts you put in and take out needs a little bit of thought.
"I think it protects the sport from any errors in the standard parts that could take us into 2021 with a legacy of problems and difficulties and we're happy to participate in that open source proposal."
"I think it's better than to have standard parts for all the reasons Paul explained," agreed Ferrari sporting director, Laurent Mekies. "It's probably slightly complicated to come up with yet another way to classify parts for the F1 cars but we are supportive of the fact that if it can avoid risk associated with having to have standard parts then it's good news."