Mirrors, tyres, porpoising control and aerodynamics. There are many changes to the 2023 technical regulation, among which the correctives to the bottom to counteract aerodynamic rebound, an intrinsic phenomenon in single-seaters with ground effect, stand out. In detail, it will be imposed an elevation of both the outer edge of the bottomequal to 15 mm, and of the minimum section of the diffuser, imposed at 10 mm. The changes alone should slow down the performance growth of the new generation single-seaters, in that continuous pursuit between teams and the Federation which has been at the heart of Formula 1 for years.
According to what was learned by the German editorial team of Auto Motor und Sportt in a conversation with Nikolas Tombazis, FIA technical director, the fund restrictions will entail a loss estimated between 15 and 20 load points for the same vehicle, equivalent to 5-7% of the total vertical thrust. The modifications alone will add about half a second of lap time, but the time gained with the natural winter development of the cars will have to be subtracted from it. Already in the leap from 2020 to 2021, the regulations introduced restrictions on the underbody, diffuser and rear aerodynamics costing 10% of the vertical load, promptly recovered by the teams despite the freezing of development and the cars now at the end of their cycle, close to their maximum potential. Probably therefore, the single-seaters of 2023 should be able to recover the load lost with the raising of the fund, if not even go beyond the values of the end of 2022.
However, it still remains to be understood how differently the changes will impact the individual single-seaters based on the basic concept. While on the one hand the shorter cars could suffer from a proportionally greater loss of load, on the other hand the greater ground clearance could reduce their sensitivity to porpoising, guaranteeing greater freedom of set-up and rewarding the concept of low ground clearance. “I think this will keep the rim off the ground in high speed sections and I think, in general, it will help most teams that run their cars very low”, Mercedes technical director Mike Elliott recently told the newsroom of Race car engineering. However, the effective impact of the new regulations on the hierarchies on the track will only become apparent at the first race of the season in Bahrain.
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