FRIC: Decoding F1’s latest controversy

So first things first. Who or what is Fric?
FRIC, actually. And in non-abbreviated form, it stands for ‘Front and Rear interconnected suspension’. Stay with us, it will get more interesting than this.

Hang on, not so fast. Interconnected is one word so shouldn’t it be ‘FRI’ then?
Very droll. But before we lose our thread to semantics, let’s just take a moment to confirm what FRIC is.

Go on...
In non-techy talk, it’s a system employed to help stabilise a car through corners by keeping its ride height as consistent as possible. Although it conventionally works - and the clue is in the name here - from back to front in a car, it’s believed the concept has also been advanced by some teams to control a car’s roll from left to right and vice versa.

And now it’s been banned?
In a letter sent to all the teams earlier this week by FIA race director Charlie Whiting, the governing body caught the paddock by surprise with the announcement they now consider the system’s primary function to be aerodynamic and thus deem it illegal.

Why has it been declared illegal now?
Good question. It's suspected that one of the eleven teams has reported a rival to the FIA in the hope of clipping their wings, but that's just supposition. It may well be that the FIA have been looking at this issue for some time and have only now decided they have enough data to declare it illegal. According to McLaren's Eric Boullier, a tipping point may have been reached with the extremity of some of the systems. But to stress, it's only been declared illegal in the opinion of Whiting, and it's not actually been banned yet either...

Why not?
Because the FIA have thrown the ball back into the teams’ court by inviting the eleven teams to vote on whether a ban should be delayed until the start of 2015.

So the teams are deciding on whether the ban should be introduced?
Effectively, yes, although their veto would technically only amount to an agreement not to protest against the use of a FRIC system by a rival outfit. But for clarity’s sake, we’ll just call it a ban.

Does the agreement just require a majority verdict?
No. And this is the rub – the vote to delay the ban until 2015 needs to be unanimous. So unless all eleven teams agree to a cooling-off period, it will be enforced from next week’s German GP onwards.

What chance of a unanimous vote?
Somewhere between slim and none. According to paddock rumour, at least one team – Force India – don’t currently use the system so they’d have nothing to lose and plenty to gain if a ban was enforced.

But if they could be persuaded?
Then there’s still the prospect of another team will veto the veto. The small teams might regard enforcing the ban a measure of revenge against the bigger teams’ indifference to their calls for cost control, but even amongst themselves they are likely to see the ban as a potential competitive advantage. Marussi