>It kind of saddens me because racing platforms (esp. Rally) are big drivers of car innovation (suspension, safety, power). Arbitrarily banning things like rotary engines has - in a way - killed an immeasurable amount of research money that might have gone towards the topic.
While I do agree with that sentiment, FIA is the difficult postion of balancing innovation with fairness. They tend to use bans to keep the playing field somewhat level. Also, in the past few years fuel efficiency is playing a bigger role with KERS and the switch to 1.6l I4 coming 2013. Those restrictions should lead to some interesting consumer level technologies.
While I do agree with that sentiment, FIA is the difficult postion of balancing innovation with fairness. They tend to use bans to keep the playing field somewhat level. Also, in the past few years fuel efficiency is playing a bigger role with KERS and the switch to 1.6l I4 coming 2013. Those restrictions should lead to some interesting consumer level technologies.