What should F1 learn from other series?

What is one technology or knowledge that is employed by another race series (WEC, IndyCar, WRC, NASCAR, MotoGP, etc) that is glaringly missing or ignored in Formula 1?
Vojin Jaksic, R&D Special Projects Manager, Roush Fenway Racing

Vojin, no matter what anyone says about Formula 1 it is still a world leader in engineering technology.

If F1 was to learn and take on one thing from the other forms of racing around the world, it would be that other formulas have realised that to be successful it has to be exciting for the spectator and viewer.

Take MotoGP for example; Dorna fought tooth and nail with the works teams to introduce a standard electronics control system, now they have it they are realising that it saves enormous amounts of money and has made the racing better.

The World Endurance Championship is another example. The engine and ERS specifications between Audi, Porsche and Toyota are wildly different. Yet the organisers have put together a set of regulations that means their performance is very close.

IndyCar is a one-chassis formula with two different engines and bodykits, and we hear a lot about the engine differences. NASCAR is basically conceived as a spectator sport. Yes, the good guys still win at the end of the day but NASCAR wouldn't put up with the runaway wins we see in F1.

F1 has got too big for itself and its decision making process is flawed by having so many people with voting rights before anything can ratified.

While it is this way, F1 will continue to appear to the big world outside as pretty stupid and only interested in itself.

We have seen Lewis Hamilton have more bad luck than Nico Rosberg this year. Why does this sometimes happen in teams? Is it because less effort and care is being taken with one car, do teams want one driver to win? It is strange that there is so much wrong with one car but not the other.
David Smith, via email

I don't think there is any skullduggery going on. No team scuppers one of its drivers to help the other. It would be pretty silly as anything can happen to either car and before you know it you could have a double non-finish for the team.

If you look at it, Hamilton has had a gearbox problem probably caused by one individual internal component followed by an ERS problem that meant he didn't set a qualifying time. So he was going to have to start at the back of the grid in China.

It was this penalty that led Mercedes to change the complete power unit, just as a precaution, but as we have now heard it is OK to be used again.

The rest of his problems have stemmed from poor starts. Both Mercedes cars have been a bit sluggish in this aspect so I think this will be the area the team will be putting a lot of effort into.

I have a question about the impact of flow-viz on technical components and tyres. The flow-viz seems to enter brake ducts, side pods and air intakes. Doesn't this ruin the brakes, set of tires, possibly engine and other components?
Edwin van der Velde, via email

Edwin, no it doesn't really do any harm that I know of.

In my day, we used a luminescent powder and that was then mixed with a sort of paraffin. You then put that on the leading edge of a component that you wanted to try to understand the flow characteristics of.

When the airflow travels across the surface, it ashes the flow-viz across that surface and it will also move it to other surfaces that that airflow moves onto.

It is a quick and easy way to get some basic information on what is happening, for instance to reveal if a wing profile is suffering from some sort of a stall characteristic, but it only works on the surface.

The more important thing to understand is what is happening to the airflow away from the surface. That is what these huge frames that we see bolted on the cars on a Friday morning are doing - they are measuring the air pressure and in some cases airflow direction around or behind the tyres.

As for the flow-viz, when it has run for a couple of kilometres it then turns to a very fine dry dust that can be wiped off very easily.

Tyrrell and Benetton had a raised nose in in the early 1990s yet some others still had the conventional nose. Was it a difficult thing to understand?
Richard Bell, via email

Richard, it's not the raised nose itself that is the major development, it is how that raised nose allows more airflow through between the front wheels and then how you develop the car around that.

If others had tested their '91/92 cars with raised noses - and they probably did - they would probably have found very little difference. Actually, it would have been worse because the rest of the car had been optimised around the airflow characteristics of the existing nose.

What needs to be done with potential concept developments of this nature is to believe in them. Then you re-optimise the car around it. But if you were an aerodynamicist and told the technical directer 'we tested this high nose concept, the numbers are worse than normal but we are committing the next three months of manpower and lots of money to see if we can develop it' he would think you were mad.

This is why Adrian Newey has done so well during his career. He is effectively the technical director and the chief aerodynamicist, so when he is convinced a concept is worth pursuing and giving it the time and commitment it requires, he doesn't have to get the permission of someone else who probably doesn't understand aerodynamics to his level.

We keep hearing about 'blown' front axles - what is the objective of this design and how difficult is it to make it work? What can actually be gained from this given the small difference it must make?
Ben Parkinson, via email

Ben, I'm afraid to say small differences are all that is left for frontrunning teams. Aerodynamic improvements that will bring you one tenth of a second are few and far between, and this is one of those developments.

Basically, on a normal system without blown axles, the airflow is taken in through the brake duct, fed through the brake disc and past the brake calliper and then exits out through the front wheel.

This is done to reduce the impact of turbulent airflow getting to the leading edge of the underfloor and also helps pull more airflow through between the front wheels.

There are two ways of making a cooling duct work. One is to make the inlet bigger but when the duct just can't flow any more air it just builds up pressure and the extra airflow spills around the outside, creating a change in how the downstream components work.

The second is to decrease the low pressure at the exit of the duct. This then pulls more airflow through it and it will also do this much more consistently. But you need to be careful that the duct doesn't stall and no air comes through it.

With the blown axle system, the clean and tidy airflow that is being fed through the axle helps pull the turbulent airflow through the wheel, making it cool the brakes and calliper more efficiently and consistently.

This will then allow for a smaller brake duct inlet to be fitted and this is where the performance improvement comes from.

If aero rules on floor & underbody downforce were relaxed would teams turn attention away from surface downforce?
Anthony Stark, via Twitter

Anthony, I would doubt it very much. You very seldom see anyone unlearning what they have learned. The learning curve for getting as much downforce from the wing designs as they currently do has been something that has evolved over many years.

I would imagine most teams would just add to the overall level of downforce the car would generate.

Why doesn't F1 return to manual gearboxes? Surely that would increase the chance of driver errors and create overtaking opportunities?
James Luke, via Facebook

James, you can't really turn the clock backwards to the old gear rod and lever. Many road cars are now going to paddleshift, or if not all the way to that then at least an electronic gearchange.

I think a lot could be done to reduce the efficiency of the current electro/hydraulic systems so that there was potential for the system itself to end up creating its own error and the driver then having to react to rectify the situation by asking for another gearchange.

I suppose it would be a bit like what this last batch of start system changes have done by creating greater potential for a problem - as both Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg have found out this season.

You had some involvement in Formula 3 in the past - what do you make of the current situation in F3 with very expensive budgets to compete in the European Series, and the 'new' BRDC British F3 championship, which isn't really for F3 cars and is one-make? How important is F3 and has it lost its way?
David Bates, via email

David, for me F3 is one of the best formulas that ever existed. The number of top drivers that came through it proves that. If people would just leave it alone, it can still be one of the best stepping stones to F1 that has ever existed.

Formula 3 was a great driver formula, but it was an even better engineer formula. When we had different chassis competing, it gave the engineers the challenge to identify problems and actually go away and redesign a solution to them. This is where I, and many other people, cut my teeth.

I don't know why F3 budgets have grown so much over the last few years. But I suppose the teams will take as much as they can get.

In 1984, we at Anson committed to running Tommy Byrne in the European F3 Championship with free tyres from Yokohama and a £20,000 budget. Perhaps that's why Anson doesn't exist any more! But for us it was just about possible.

GP2 and GP3 were introduced as a money-making process for a group of people that wanted to kill off F3 and supersede Formula 3000 and by having them race at grands prix, it meant that the drivers were performing in front of the F1 teams. There's no better showcase than that.

I am not completely sure of what the current F3 regulations are, but what I would say is that when I did know a little bit about it, the downforce levels were just that little bit too high.

I first met Eddie Jordan when we were both doing European F3 back in the early 1980s. As I got to know him I realised how he operated, he was always trying to pinch my drivers who had any kind of sponsorship - but they always came back even if their pockets were a little emptier than when they left!

One time at Imola, we were both using Yokohama tyres and he was the works team and I was just a customer. There were only two sets of the qualifying tyres available and we both had one set each fitted, which was all each driver was allowed to use.

He complained to Yokohama so much that he needed to have the extra set available just in case one of his tyres went flat before he used them, so they came and stripped my only set of qualifying tyres.

Saying that, I am proud to know and have worked for him!

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