The regulatory revolution adopted by Formula 1 for 2022 was the culmination of years of efforts to improve racing and the start of what has been heralded as an exciting new era.
However, while there is no doubt that great progress has been made in improving the cars’ ability to track each other more closely, the past season has not been without its flaws.
Red Bull’s dominance has meant that the championship fight was pretty much a given after the summer break and while some racing has been good, it hasn’t seen the colossal improvement some had hoped for.
Ross Brawn, one of the main architects of the revolution, admitted that things haven’t been perfect, but insisted that to think everything would work out right would have been a utopian dream, especially considering that some of the major problems that have overshadowed the early stage of the season were due more to the actions of the teams than anything else to do with F1.
When asked by Motorsport.com to rate the success of the new rules, Brawn replied: “I think it’s an eight or nine out of ten, and it was towards where we wanted to be.”
“In retrospect I think a couple of things we moved on we probably wouldn’t have done. If you recall, there was a time when the teams argued that the rules were too restrictive and that the cars would all be the same.”
“Consequently, under pressure, we relaxed a bit and allowed more freedom in various areas. But the consequence was that we were taken advantage of! But this is Formula 1, you know what’s going to happen.”
Get sucked into porpoising
Carlos Sainz, Ferrari F1-75, fights with Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes W13
Photo by: Carl Bingham / Motorsport Images
The point most talked about during the first few races was porpoising, which affected most of the grid and was to prove to be Mercedes’ biggest problem later in the year.
Brawn admitted that while F1 bosses and the FIA were well aware that the return of ground effect could trigger a return to porpoising, they didn’t expect things to go so badly.
However, he did highlight how some teams have been eager to pursue downforce gains that could in theory be achieved by running the car close to the ground, but could not be achieved in the real world.
“I think porpoising was more of a problem than we expected,” he explained. “Those of us who experienced this years ago were probably more aware of how to deal with these problems, and the Adrian Newey-designed car in particular I don’t think had almost any problems.”
“We all know that with a ground-effect car you can’t run close to the ground. It’s too critical. possible. But in the real world it wasn’t possible to do that.”
“So they were stuck, because they had designed a car to run in that regime. And it was very difficult to get out of it, especially because they saw the loss of performance that came with it, and they didn’t want to give it up.”
“However, I think that now they have all found a good compromise. Now the porpoising is decidedly reduced”.
Run closer
Charles Leclerc, Ferrari F1-75, Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB18
Photo by: Alastair Staley / Motorsport Images
Although the aim of the 2022 rules was to allow cars to run closer together to increase the chances of overtaking, the drivers said the improvements weren’t that dramatic.
Sebastian Vettel was one of the most critical and questioned whether the progress made was worth the expense and effort to create new rules.
“The big push this year has been to make cars capable of overtaking and following much more closely. But I don’t think there’s a huge difference,” said the four-time F1 champion.
“We can follow those closest in front of us, but we have less aerodynamic drag, so you need to be closer to overtake. As for the tyres, the main goal was to allow them to last longer, but I don’t think that’s the case. it was a big difference”.
“I don’t want to say it was a failure, but a lot of effort was certainly made and not all the effort was seen on the track, let’s put it that way.”
Brawn countered by suggesting that there have been a number of undercurrent improvements which have made a big difference to the quality of the racing.
“What we don’t often talk about, and we’ve come to realize over time, is side-by-side interference,” he said. “We all think about wake, but what we didn’t appreciate until we started working and we created the models where we could run two cars in close proximity to each other is the impact of the side by side”.
“In those scenarios where you see a driver trying to hold a tight line through a corner as soon as a rival’s car runs alongside him, he loses grip. We hadn’t evaluated this scenario much.”
“With these cars the risk is much less. So I think in wheel-to-wheel battles, when there are two or sometimes even three cars side by side, the drivers have a lot more confidence that nothing weird is going to happen.”
“And the other comment I got from the drivers – because I was quite excited when we introduced these cars – is that they are predictable. The balance doesn’t change drastically. So, you lose downforce, but you know what the car is doing. It’s understeer or oversteer, it’s not the unpredictability of last year.”
Brawn also believes it is wrong to make direct comparisons between the old and new cars, as staying with the previous formula would have left F1 on a downward trajectory.
“We mustn’t forget that the cars we had were getting worse and worse,” he said, “and without a change of mind they would have only gotten worse and worse.”
“So not only did we find a direction that I think is better, but we also stopped the descent into undriveable cars in front of us.”
A new mindset
Stefano Domenicali, CEO of Formula 1, Mohammed bin Sulayem, President of the FIA, on the starting grid
Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images
According to Brawn, however, the biggest success of the rules is not something tangible seen on the track, but the impact it has had on the attitude of rules makers.
“I think it’s been a great success and I think the important thing is that at the top of the list of any future rule changes is how drivable are these cars?”
“I think we’ve seen it both on track and objectively on the data. Even the skeptics, and there were some who were wondering if it was worth it, raised their hand and said ‘no, definitely a lot better than before ‘”.
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