" Either they all have it or none of them have it."
Take that to an extreme and you might as well order a one make/one chassis class so all the cars are identical.
But F1 has always been as much about the cars as the drivers.
Another way to approach it might be to allow them a maximum horsepower and set safety criteria and allow the teams to spend the money finding the most efficient way to put it on the track.
One answer might be lightening the cars, another might be 'overtaking' power and so on. To a certain extent, the idea of banning refuelling works in that way, fuel efficiency should win, but then they have banned diesels even though high power lightweight racing diesels exist.
There are even engines which don't have crankshafts, are meant to be 35% more efficient, but the 2010 specs make them illegal too.
In part, it stems from the problem of unintended consequence, in trying to prevent one approach from giving an advantage, one specifies that only approach 'X' can be used: eg: one might specify that "the engines will use conrods of steel", meaning to exclude exotic materials but this then means that engines will use conrods, and by extension an eccentric throw (crankshaft) to convert linear to rotary motion; or that "fuel will be to standard XXXX" (a high energy petro mix) which will eliminate the use of diesels and so on.
Even the 'no moving parts' in aerodynamics eliminated the use of responsive structures like Ferrari's flexible wing, while particular reading of the rules cast doubt on the Braun solution to diffusers.
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