Why can’t it just be all assisted and allow for much easier operation?
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Assisted braking adds more components which means more weight. Weight is the death of speed.
Also, they feeling of driving is much different since assisted brakes lose some of the feedback the cars gives about its condition. Drivers like to be as closely connected to the car as possible.
Lastly, assisted brakes could lead to more unintentional lockups, which is no bueno.
When big heavy metal box move fast, big push is needed to slow the fast down, if big push is not enough big bad, if big push is more than enough big good.
(a f1 car is extremely aerodynamic and extremely fast those combined make the car need to have insane brakes to allow the driver to not ram into a wall. assists are only assists they cannot do the whole job along with the fact that it would probably make the car slower. an f1 car is made for elite drivers who would probably prefer a more Freeform experience that allows them full control of the car, when designing an f1 car the main thing on your mind should probably be speed, not ease of use.)
If by assisted you mean the driver would need less force to press the brake pedal, then you have to remember that when an f1 car is braking from 200mph ish it can get upwards of 5G in deceleration, that pushes the driver and thus his legs onto the brake which makes the whole thing a little bit easier.
Also F1 used to have different sorts of driver assists like traction control and stability control which are now banned because the sport wants the drivers to be more of a factor in the racing.
Some of it is a bit of a legacy restriction – not allowing power assist on brakes. The problem here is that F1 teams are pretty smart. Once you have assisted braking, the concern is that teams will start programming the brakes to allow for automatic left/right and front/rear bias shifting or adjusting brakes according to temperature etc. This is basically traction assistance and (simplifying vastly) all the driver has to do is stamp the brakes really hard approaching every corner and let the electronics do the work for them. Some feel that this takes away from driver skill as a factor for F1 performance.
In addition to what other people have said: F1 has very specific rules on what parts and equipment cars can use. When I say *specific* I really mean it. The F1 technical rules is 183 pages. You want to read a rule set that gets hyper technical and pedantic. Read the F1 rules and then try to figure out how people previously tried to game these rules (which led to rules being written how they written).
As an example: I draw your attention to rule 11.1.3 (From the FIA 2023 rule book. Find it on Google):
**11.1.3 Any powered device, other than the system referred to in Article 11.6, which is capable of altering the configuration or affecting the performance of any part of the brake system is forbidden.**
Also be ready to read sections 11.4 and 11.6 and be ready to thread that needle.
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