The words of the FIA technical manager
In Canada at the beginning of June, F1 and FIA presented the cornerstones of the 2026 regulation, surprising – negatively – more than one team. The regulation it hasn’t been fully made official yet and the aim of the F1 governing bodies is to definitively close the issue around mid-October at the end of a collective work together with the teams.
“There are still specific topics that we will define together with the teams – explained the FIA technical manager Nick Tombazis as reported by the newspaper motorsportmagazine.com – these topics involve the teams assisting us through simulations and design. We hope this will happen during the summer to have everything in place by the time fall arrives”Officially, the teams will not be able to start working on the aerodynamic development of the 2026 cars no earlier than January 1, 2025 and even this deadline does not push the FIA to speed up the process also to avoid that some team might think of getting around this date to start working earlier on the 2026 car to gain an advantage over the competition.
Tombazis is confident that the January 1, 2025 date will be respected also thanks to the checks – even surprise ones – that the FIA carries out in the wind tunnels of all the F1 teams, infrastructures in which with the arrival of the budget cap by regulation the teams must keep the archive of all the activities carried out in the last two years. In addition, according to Tombazis, the technical market and the transfers from one team to another will also constitute a ‘natural’ safety net against cheats. “A large scale activity such as a blatant fraud in terms of illicit launch of a 2026 program or otherwise involves a large number of people in a stable – added Tombazis – you couldn’t hide something like that and within the team and limit the knowledge of it to three people. The consequences of such a thing would be so enormous that I think it would take a very brave team, or very stupid, or both, to decide to embark on an adventure like that. Because teams lose people, not everyone in a team is always happy, or happy to participate in a scam. It’s the history of F1, teams have often been put in trouble by ‘whistleblowers’ who once they changed sides spilled the beans about what the teams they worked for previously had done”.
#FIA #calm #cheat #team