The regulations surrounding the ‘ugly’ noses which have become common place up and down the grid, will most likely change in 2013, with appearance being taken into account.
The 2012 rules mandate a lower nose for safety reasons, but they stop short of forcing teams to reduce their chassis height, which has led to the majority of cars featuring a stepped nose.
The only car to not feature a stepped nose so far is that of McLaren’s MP4-27. The reason behind this is because of the way in which McLaren designs its chassis to be much lower – a trait they ran with in 2011 and 2010.
Ross Brawn went some way in explaining why the FIA chose not to amend the regulations to include a lower chassis height: “There is no doubt that we should try to make the cars look attractive, racey and appealing,” he told Autosport.
“The feature we’ve all ended up with for the nose is going the wrong way. It was a bit unfortunate. There was an identified need to lower the nose, and of course if you lower the nose you’ve got to join it to the chassis.”
It’s believed a handful of teams spoke to the FIA, requesting they don’t lower the maximum chassis height because of the cost involved in developing an entirely new, lower chassis.
“A few teams sat there and said, ‘We want to be able to carry our chassis over [to 2012]’, which we know is nonsense,” added the Mercedes team principal.
Concerns have been expressed both by fans and those inside the sport about the look of the cars and how this may impact on sponsorship and viewing figures, with less educated fans turning off as a result.
This is what will most likely lead to a re-writing of the regulations for next season.
Brawn suggests any regulation changes be measured against a checklist which assesses the benefits and drawbacks, including whether or not it is visually pleasing.
“You perhaps need to have a checklist for every new regulation. You could ask what the objective is, whether it has a racing benefit and whether it has an aesthetic benefit.”
He added: “Some of the aesthetics you get used to… but some of them, like the nose, we have to fix. McLaren has done a car to that spec so we could follow their dimensions.”
However, the FIA will need convincing that aesthetics are important, with Toro Rosso technical chief Giorgio Ascanelli revealing that the governing body’s technical delegate Charlie Whiting shot down the idea of such a regulation.
“They are not nice,” the Italian told Autosport. “ Lotus [specifically technical director James Allison] wanted a rule to avoid them looking so ugly. But Charlie [Whiting] said it would be the first time we made a rule to avoid cars being ugly.”
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