[gennickhif]

'Mike, What I said was (with the two typo's corrected) "People have, indeed, been saying for years that the problem is to much aero' and not enough mechanical grip but even if that issue was addressed (yet again), it'd come back to the cars being closely matched again."

In no way did I intend to suggest it was addressed properly and surpised you read that into it.

It doesn't really matter what they do, the designers will find any means that can sneak through the rules to gain whatever advantage they can get, redarding the front wings, what is your point? Convergent development will generally end up with very similar results with some variations depending on teams focusing on different types of tracks - low drag/high speed Vs high downforce/low speed cornering as the chassis/bodywork can be a big influence on these, and other, properties.
Some of you may remember Renault and their strong starting performance which was due to a greater rearward CoG than the other teams - something that is now limited by the F1 regulations. Regulations that force the manufacturers to use ever more similar designs of engines and chassis to meet the reg's. In the past there were numerous engine configurations, from V8, flat 8, v and flat 12s and even a couple of 16 cylinder configurations - IIRC, Ferrari even had a 2 cylinder for monaco. Bores and strokes also varied.
perhaps they should have got rid of a lot of these limiting regulations, with basic weight, engine configuration, safety and perhaps fuel limitations? This could change several performance attributes but I would expect we'd lose the close racing that we currently have - I don't think anyone would like to get back to having the winner lap everyone else and cars finishing 6 laps in arrears?