Thread: KERS is a flop
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      06-24-2009, 03:01 AM   #4
x838nwy
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Personally, I think Max Mosley on the whole has good intentions and good concepts. I just feel he lacks the technical knowledge/technical team to put his concepts into practice. Putting "green" tech into F1 is not such a terrible idea, but in the case of KERS, the technology is not ready for F1 and F1 isn't ready for it either.

It is inevitable that we will all be using one form of KERS or another in our cars soon. And perhaps motorsport does have some responsibility in being relevant to what we drive to work. But in our cars, we don't really mind the odd 20kg if it means we'll save a bit of cash at the pumps. And honestly, where you put that 20kg in a 1,700kg car is pretty immaterial (unless you put it on the roof or somthing silly). So, in a sense, a number of these "green" technologies are better developed in road cars rather than on the race track. In ~700kg F1 cars where 1 second covers like the first 8 places, things are less forgiving. Depending on the track and a whole bunch of other factors, getting the right weight distribution may get you more speed than having KERS - or at least KERS at its current level of development.

Another idiotic thing is the fact that they introduced slicks and a bunch of other changes to tyres and aero regs. at the same time as KERS. With these changes, teams must find a new optimum weight distribution for their cars to work properly so the importance of having weights at the right place(s) is amplified.

To get the technology in being almost usable (i.e. the advantages outweighs the disadvantages of having KERS) takes a great deal of money and to have F1 in a state where any radical technology can be effectively applied will take stability in the regulations. 2008/2009 had the money but not stability, 2009/2010 will, by the looks of things, have neither. So imo, things are not looking too good for trying to make F1 any "greener".

Mr.Mosley appears to be trying to make F1 more "relevant" and introduce more overtaking and I'm okay with all of that. What he needs is someone with a similar insight to F1 cars as Ross Brawn or Adrian Newey on board his team to get proper, workable and sustainable regulation in F1 while at the same time achieve those goals rather than just throwing out frankly crazy ideas.
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