*yawn*

????
Where on earth did I say anything on Mercedes having an advantage because of knowing rules in advance?
It's like you're comment is on something completely different. You sure you really read everything?

LOL, clearly you aren't aware of what teams are doing, or using, how it's all monitored, or much else.
Enjoy your ChatGPT, your cheap PC & your bubble world your living in.

Didn't work for McLaren, did it?

Not really. The r&d restrictions and the cost cap are intended to enable a level playing field. The big 3, Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari, have enough money in reserve that they could create an entirely separate engineering team to spend all their effort on 2026, without violating the cost cap rules for 2024.

Amusingly, there *is* one team currently doing wind tunnel testing on a 2026 design- and that's Andretti, because they're not an F1 team, they're not subject to the restrictions.

You know it's been thoroughly debunked that Mercedes had any sort of advantage of knowing the rules ahead of everyone else, right?

Agree completely.

It was Hamilton who complained that Red Bull was so far ahead that they could already shift all of their attention to next seasons' car, and that that should be limited, ignoring they could well do the exact same thing. But he should know of that 'advantage' ofcourse, as they've been doing exactly that at Mercedes for seven years.
It took a change in design philosophy to upset the order. And that wouldn't even have happened if Mercedes had sufficiently recognised the importance of a couple of things other than their engine, had just done their homework better.
All teams had the exact same amount of time -and money- to design and develop to the new philosophy. Due to the nature of things, only one of them turned out to have done the best job. Too bad for them, it wasn't Mercedes. But to then go point at others for your oversights, decisions or mistakes? Come on, that's befitting for twelve year olds only.

Now again, with the new rules coming, all teams have the same amount of resources available to prepare.
Whether the most clever minds now have to do it all in just one year or in a couple of years doesn't make much difference at all: one of them will turn out to have done the best job, compared to all others.
So to me, competition wise, this is a completely pointless decision, as was Hamiltons complaining about it. There will be more room for hindsights and develoments later on, but that's the same for everyone too - although likely a shut door, given the FiA's policy of in season development. Who shoots who in the foot there?

It's OK if you say it makes no sense - I actually agree!- , but take that to Hamilton please, and to the people at the FiA that rewarded his complaints, instead of to me.

Sounds like Hamilton’s complaining being rewarded again.

That makes no sense. Mercedes is among those that need extra effort to catch up, and this blocks that.

this is what happens to governing bodies before they get toppled over. Next they will be talking up about how people shouldn't heat their homes in the winter and freeze to death.

That's fascinating that they don't allow GPU acceleration. I'd love to see how they enforce this.

Also it can't be very green can it? Banks and banks of CPUs chugging away doing maths that a GPU could do without breaking a sweat.

I would suspect for a relatively inexpensive outlay of cash for a "gaming rig", you could build a home computer that could at least do rudimentary CFD.

I've been doing generative AI and chatGPT style language modeling on a $1500 PC.

Hrm. Interesting. F1 doesn't currently allow GPU acceleration on CFD modeling, as it breaks the "allocated units" calculation. So it's entirely possible a home-based system running GPU-based acceleration would be MORE powerful than the systems the F1 teams have- or at least equivalent for a fraction of the cost.

How are they going to monitor CFD testing? I mean I bet if one splashes a bit of cash you could create quite a handy CFD system at ‘home’ for some off-time testing (and call it a hobby project).