No more wheel spinners, another new 2010 F1 rule
Another of the new rules for 2010 is that the teams can’t use the spinners that became popular in the last couple of years. These used to smooth the airflow over the wheels and ensure they caused minimal turbulence and drag. It also used to improve rear downforce and cooling.
These little gadgets had many benefits to the teams so it’s hard to see that they would have abandoned them without a fight but then the whole Alonso debacle where the spinner wasn’t fitted correctly and eventually tore the wheel free may have softened them up on that one. With the teams fighting for every inch I’ll be interested to see what the teams can do to claw back the positive sides to these devices.
It does mean that pit stops will really all be about getting the tyres on and off this year, there’s no room for any mistakes. I seem to recall endless times where a wheel takes a few extra seconds but it doesn’t hurt anyone because the car is still fueling. These errors will be real now and we’ve seen a reasonable number of races where those few seconds are hugely important. I wonder if the teams are practicing these quite as much as they should – the new teams will have never done them under pressure before either.
It’s another odd rule but one that can be justified on purely saftey grounds, it also makes the pit stops all about one thing and that can’t be bad.
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