I wonder about how true this was historically. I imagine race car driving had periods of rapid, exciting innovation. But I can see how a lot of it has probably reached levels of optimization where the rules, safety, and technology change well within the realm of diminishing returns. I'm sure there's still a ridiculous about of R&D though? (I don't really know race car driving)

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altmanaltman 13 hours ago | parent [-]

Sure there is crazy levels of R&D but that mostly happens off season or if there is a change in regulations which happen every 4-5 years usually. Interestingly, this year the entire grid starts with new regs and we don't really know the pecking order yet.

But my whole point was that race to race, it really isn't that much different for the teams as the comment implied and I am still kind of lost how it fits to SWE unless you're really stretching things.

Even then, most teams dont even make their own engines etc.

	▲	skydhash 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Do you really think that rainy Canada is the same as Jedddah, or Singapore? And what is the purpose of the free practice sessions? You’ve got the big bet to design the car between the season (which is kinda the big architectural decisions you make at the beginning of the project). Then you got the refinement over the season, which are like bug fixings and performance tweaks. There’s the parts upgrade, which are like small features added on top of the initial software. For the next season, you either improve on the design or start from scratch depending on what you’ve learned. In the first case, It is the new version of the software. In the second, that’s the big refactor. I remember that the reserve drivers may do a lot of simulations to provide data to the engineers.