I ment within the confines of the rules the teams have worked to extract maximium effiency in incredible details. If they did away with such strict rules you wouldnt be seeing such beautiful minute refinements that add so little but together can be the difference between winning a race or being out of the points which makes it such a great team sport.

But if you removed the strictness of the rules then you'd get room for innovation.

Quote from skiingman :

I don't know the exact rationale, but it probably had something to do with the governing bodies being able to more easily check the safety of the wing-mounts, as well as desire to reduce the benefit provided by the wings. Wing mounted to back of body is a little easier to inspect for safety than a wing mounted through the body directly to the suspension uprights I would suppose.

Think about how great that would be today though....you can set the car up for nearly optimum mechanical grip, and the thousands of pounds of downforce you create are fed directly into the tires, not through the springs and dampers.

I think safety was another big factor. The amount of g-loadings and vibrations that would go into a wing structure directly from the wheels gave everybody the willies.

Well if schumacher can lap everyone but his teammate in a race with strict rules imagine how much performance difference they would gain with more room to innovate. the less we see of a driver winning because he's cars a quantum leap above others (which some would say about jacque villeneuve's career) the better, atleast now race stratagies can make up for performance differences.

btw did anyone see the 2.4litre v8 cosworth engine redbull and williams (if i remember correctly) should be using next year 20,002rpm
some teams might be using rev limited 3litre v10's because they cant afford to develope a v8, ofcourse if the v10 still proves quicker the teams will be using them instead. FIA seems to have already lost the plot on trying to cut costs :P

Quote from Michael Miskella :

Well if schumacher can lap everyone but his teammate in a race with strict rules imagine how much performance difference they would gain with more room to innovate.

Formula 1 should be the pinacle of motorsport, there are plenty of single make driver focused championships (A1GP, GP2, Renault World Series etc.) but F1 is not just about drivers it's about teams and cars as well. If you set every tiny dimension in a F1 car it's just a case of fine tuning, using the best materials, to do this you need money. If you allow room for innovation then you need imagination, which is free, therefore a team with a good designer and a fraction of the budget can put up a real headache to the top teams (think ground effects, fan cars, turbos, active suspension and a load of other brainwaves most of which have been banned).

Quote from colcob :

I think safety was another big factor. The amount of g-loadings and vibrations that would go into a wing structure directly from the wheels gave everybody the willies.

Agreed. There would be some very scary loads there.

My $0.02:

I don't think the two-wing desing is ugly. I think the "round hole" airbox is ugly, but the wing design is all right, appearance-wise.

Maybe change the rearwing in F08 like that to provide more close racing