Ask Gary: Will the 2021 rules mean a Mercedes car concept change?

With the new rules set for 2021, how important will the rake of the new cars be in relation to the ground effect? Are we going to see more cars going towards Mercedes' low-rake concept or is it Mercedes that will be forced to adopt the high-rake philosophy instead?

Ivan Souza, via email

The quick answer is I don't really have a clue because that's what all the research and development that the teams are doing will reveal. However, the reasons behind a high-rake philosophy are still the same, if actually not more of a requirement.

Using a high rake on current cars helps in several ways.

The front wing is more powerful in slow corners because it is nearer to the ground. As the rear of the car gets pushed down with downforce as the speed increases, it means that the front wing stays at a similar height and because of this loses some of its power by not getting any closer to the ground.

The underfloor and diffuser also works harder because of the increased angle. This increases the diffuser volume, especially inside the rear tyres.

Finally, by having more of a change in rear ride height than with a low-rake car, you have more control over any aerodynamic airflow separation characteristics that you want to create from the diffuser.

To achieve all of this, the 'sealing' of the sides of the underfloor is critical. It is the outwash created by the bargeboards that makes all of this possible.

With the new regulations for 2021, the bargeboards as we currently know them will be gone, along with a lot of the aerodynamic research completed so far has been to eliminate the outwash. So how the teams approach clawing back some of the losses with the new regulations will dictate if high rake cars are still beneficial.

On the way to that, remember Mercedes has won the last six constructors' and drivers' titles with its low rake concept, so a low rake car can't be all bad.

Haas suggests it could have been at the front of the midfield had it developed its car properly. What went wrong and how can a team struggle so much?

David Burns, via email

Talk is easy but development and the direction of that development is a difficult process. Haas did start the season on the front foot and it just got worse from there.

Through the years, we have had many ifs and buts. However, the reality is that over a season it all usually washes out one way or another and you end up with a fair championship order.

In reality, with the team's budgets, manpower and facilities it means that we have a two-tier championship. Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari are out there on their own and Haas has another six teams in very close contention for best of the rest.

Yes, if Haas could have carried its Albert Park performance forward over the rest of the season then it might just have stood the chance of being on top of that pile. But it didn't and for me the worst thing is that the team knew it had a major problem fairly early in the season.

But even as of today, it still hasn't properly got on top of that problem so it doesn't bode too well for next year - although Haas has shown an improvement with a double appearance in Q3 in Brazil, following the switch back to a more Melbourne-like specification.

I have always found that proving to yourself that you understand the development direction required to move forward from wherever you are is way more important than proving it to anyone else.

Do you think the collaboration between the Honda F1 team and the Honda Jet team has anything to do with the fact the Honda works so well at altitude?

Pat Caselli, via email

I think any input from a specialist company will always help with optimising specific areas of the car. Having the direct contact with a company within the same group means that you can really get into the finer detail of your problems without feeling you have to protect your own intellectual property or that there is a need to be secret squirrel about suggestions for improvement.

On another subject loosely related to your question, this is an area where I struggle to understand how the budget cap will work as far as controlling costs.

Now that the Honda Jet engineers know what is required from an F1 turbo and the MGU-H and have put forward suggestions that appear to have improved its performance significantly, they won't stop thinking about the next step. It will only take two people meeting up in a bar and comparing notes for them to instigate further improvements.

I'm pretty sure this sort of thing will happen for all the works teams. You just can't have the mothership having huge research budgets and manpower without 'unofficially' tapping into it. The financial regulations ascribe a value to work from other areas of the company, but such informal exchange of ideas is not something that's easy to track.

Going back to your question, basically the turbo is there to increase the engine's intake pressure and, in turn, produce more power from a smaller capacity engine. When at altitude and the air is less dense, the problem of power from that same capacity engine is exaggerated.

So a more efficient turbo package that has the capacity to work harder at lower air densities will help get that power back over a wider range of air densities.

On top of that, you should be able to produce more electrical energy from the MGU-H, which goes directly to the MGU-K, so get it right and this area of development on the current power units is a win-win situation.

There hasn't been much talk about how the budget caps will hamper the big three, which all spend way over $175m at the moment. They are successful because of the budget but are almost certainly not run efficiently, because they don't have to be. Is it not going to be very difficult for them to shed 75/100 million dollars in costs and still remain competitive?

Antony O'Brien, via email

I'm not sure that the top three will have to shed anything like $75/100 million. What we need to remember is that the $175 million budget cap doesn't cover everything. On top of that comes the driver salaries, the team's top three earners, the commercial department costs and all manner of other exemptions not directly related to the development of the car.

So, in reality, for a team like Mercedes the overall financial overhead will still be well north of $300 million, which is a number that the other teams outside of the top three can only dream about.

There is such a financial divide between those that have and those that don't that I don't believe a budget cap will ever bring the grid together. Don't get me wrong, it's not a bad thing to put some top end control on spending, otherwise it could really out price itself out in a few years.

But if we want the grid to close up then I believe it needs to be done in a different way.

We are all pretty sure that aerodynamics rule the roost when it comes to car performance. If I had anything to do with putting in place some sort of an equivalency equation, I would be looking at CFD and windtunnel usage allowance.

The regulations and the control of this is already in place and very well managed, so it would not be difficult to allow each team a different allowance. My formula would take into account a team's budget in millions and its manpower in head count, and the middle range would be able to use 100% of the current allowance.

So in reality, for the teams with the big budgets and higher personnel count, windtunnel and CFD time would be reduced, while for the lesser funded and lower manpower teams it would be increased - leaving more or less the same overall environmental impact.

Why doesn't F1 move to a standard fuel tank? Because then you don't need fuel sensors as you can only use a certain amount of fuel per race.

Mark Vink, via Twitter

There are two regulations relevant to fuel flow and fuel usage. The main one in question is the fuel flow, which is from where you get the power. Currently, that is set at a maximum flow rate of 100 kg/h and the FIA defines the fuel flow meter that measures this flow rate.

So basically, at any point in time on a lap that is the maximum fuel flow you can have. If you can find some grey area then that allows you to run a higher fuel flow. The benefit with these engines is actually a triple whammy - if you can get more fuel into the engine this gives you more power and from that extra power comes more exhaust gasflow.

So you also get an increase in turbo boost pressure, which gives you more power, and also from that extra exhaust gas flow to the MGU-H, which basically holds the turbo from overspeeding, this generates more electrical energy that goes directly to the MGU-K.

The maximum fuel usage allowed over a race is 105kg. To achieve the race distance with this amount of fuel means that you have to do a bit of lift and coast at some areas of the track.

If you can deliver the power of the corner with a combination of the maximum fuel flow and ERS optimisation, then you can hit the overall fuel limit with lifting and coasting.

Why don't they start having tyres with two seconds or more difference in compounds? Most of the time the yellows [medium] outperform the reds [softs] during a race anyway.

Johan Barnard, via Twitter

If you had anything like that, assuming you still had to use two compounds, then you would need to define when a car could stop for its tyre change otherwise everyone would be in the pits at the end of the first lap.

Tyres are a fairly difficult thing to alter to the extent that you are talking about, so I don't think we are that far away with the compound range that we have.

In general, it works out at about 0.5/0.7s lap time difference when the rubber is new. However, I would love to see the drivers be required to use all three compounds in each race and that each car had to do at least 25% of the race distance on each compound.

On a recent podcast, Rubens Barrichello talked about a big regret after losing third place for Jordan at Hungary in 1995 where he had an engine failure at the last corner. He suggested that had Peugeot not had a system in place to stop a spectacular and potentially embarrassing engine failure, he could have coasted to the finish line - so what exactly happened?

Michael Davis, via email

Yes, I remember it well. It was our first year with Peugeot and we were all getting to know each other. To be honest, this engine shutdown was a bit of a carryover from Martin Brundle's very smoky engine failure in Brazil in 1994 in his McLaren-Peugeot.

After that, Peugeot decided they didn't want the public embarrassment of a smoky engine failure so they put various electrical shutdown procedures in place to protect the engine. In effect, it was more to protect Peugeot's image and after that everything was genuinely (not) an electrical problem.

In Rubens's case, it was an air valve system leak that basically meant the air pressure in the system got too low to shut the valves efficiently. It had been going down for a few laps but we didn't know about this and, more importantly, we didn't know that Peugeot still kept the engine shutdown process in place in races. Normally, engine manufacturers have these active for practice sessions but not for races just in case it happens to be a sensor problem or a rogue signal.

The reason for the air-valve system pressure failure was that the engine oil system didn't scavenge as efficiently as it should. Oil was pressurised into the camshaft bearings, but on this engine it only drained back down to the sump through gravity drainage holes at the front of the engine. This meant that under acceleration, which an F1 car does for a lot more time than braking, a lot of oil was left in the camshaft areas and some of it went into the cylinder that acts as the valve springs

In the end, basically the small chamber area filled up with too much oil, it couldn't get out of the very small breather holes and hydraulics, damaging the air piston seal, which then let the air pressure leak out.

After that race we, together with Peugeot, fitted external head drains at the rear of the heads down into the scavenge pump inlets in the sump and, guess what, it never happened again.

That, plus switching off the electronic failure mode protection for the races, led to the odd smoky failure - but at least then the reason for not finishing a race was the real reason.

Do you have a question for Gary Anderson? Send it to askgary@autosport.com, use #askgaryF1 on Twitter or look out for our posts on Facebook and Instagram giving you the chance to have your question answered