garagetinkerer wrote:
funkymonkey wrote:
This move has nothing to do with Renault actually. It is all about TR being RBR sister company.
For next year when it is going to be complex design job for all teams to fit everything into totally different package, TR are not going to be doing their own work as they have done so far. They are going to use RBR gearboxes and other system (possibly hydraulics and electrical and other like KERS. ). They went on record to say that today. And this is mainly why they need to move to Renault as RBR is on renault. This makes it a lot of take it from here and put it there kinda deal between these two sister teams. Internals will be shared and just for technicality of rules, they will have 2 different chassis.
But this is huge advantage to these two come next season as lot of key systems will be shared. This mean twice the data, double test bed, and double feedback.
Frankly there are plenty of other technical partnerships in F1 which mainly focus on 1 or 2 part sharing and resource rentals type of deals, but this is going well beyond that next year. FIA and FOM rather just allow customer cars if this is going to go on like this. Or put a complete ban on things like this which honestly is not going to help F1 in today'c economic climate where small teams simply do not have all resources to compete completely independently.
FIA's rule was always specific to complete car, even if parts were the same, as f1 always had engine suppliers since god knows when. that was my understanding of the rule you mentioned. teams with customer engines built their own gearboxes not because of regulation, but for competitive advantage.
Yes I know the rule, what I meant to say is that with this level of collaboration (or rather passing of parts and even dictating driver choice and top management decisions of other team ) happening and FIA's in ability to avoid clear sister team advantage on and off the track, it would be better if they just allowed customer cars again back into F1. This way we will see more quality cars on the track with some smaller teams running good fundamental chassis setup and competing much better than what we have seen from bottom 3 teams for last 3 years.
Personally I hate the TR and had more respect for HRT and still have more respect for Marussia and Caterham. TR is just becoming a puppet at this point. More blatant puppet as years go by.