Action (by the FIA) and reaction (by the teams). The change in the rules that the International Federation wants to impose for 2023, taking safety as the excuse, does not like six of the ten teams.
The technical staff of President Ben Sulayem is under attack because the measures that will start from the Belgian GP with new checks of the skid blocks of the board to prevent them from deforming, allowing certain cars to lower the bottom generating more downforce, and the idea of raise the sidewalks by 25 mm next year and the elbow where the diffuser starts to rise does not like at all for reasons that are profoundly different.
The issue of safety has nothing to do with these measures and Christian Horner openly declares that the 2023 regulations are being pushed in a specific direction only to favor a “certain team”.
The board on the bottom of the 2022 single-seaters with adaptive skid blocks
Photo by: Giorgio Piola
Red Bull and Ferrari, the suspects of being “smart” with adaptive skates, found other team members against the unilateral decision of the FIA: in addition to their respective customer teams (AlphaTauri for Red Bull; Haas and Alfa Romeo for Ferrari), there would also be the Williams stance, a team powered by Mercedes power units.
On the other hand there would be McLaren, Aston Martin, Mercedes customers, combined with Alpine. Porpoising is clearly an excuse: at Paul Ricard we only observed sporadic hopping due to bottoming (in particular McLaren), while the attempt to push the rules to break the current hierarchies emerges more and more clearly.
Christian Horner, Red Bull Racing Team Principal
Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images
“I think the problem is what they are studying as a remedy for next year – said Horner – the technical directive [per Spa] it does not concern us. I think there is a lot of pressure to significantly change the 2023 regulations so that a certain team can take advantage of that concept ”.
“But the problem is that we are at a very late stage of the year to change. I think the President is doing the right thing: he is gathering all the information and hopefully a sensible solution can be found. Now it is too late to bring about it. fundamental changes to the regulation “.
Horner believes that the intervention of the FIA is not necessary: Mercedes can reset porpoising by raising the ground clearance of its car …
“Just get the car up: it’s easy. We haven’t had any problems all year. There is only one team that has had a big trouble. In F1 there are some of the most talented engineers in the world and I can guarantee that the year next there will be no single-seaters still with problems ”.
If Christian read the rule change as an attempt to get the Star back into orbit, there are other teams that would no longer be able to make ends meet, having long since started the design of the 2023 machine. Raising the funds would mean reviewing the aerodynamic concepts developed so far, starting from a blank sheet of paper.
And all this clashes with reality since there are teams that would intend to keep the base of the current body in order to invest resources on other performance issues that could allow them to grow.
Charles Leclerc, Ferrari F1-75
Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images
The alternative proposal is to raise the machines by only 10 mm, looking for a compromise that could satisfy all parties (except one).
Mohammed Ben Sulayem is realizing that the path he has taken risks being very dangerous due to the impacts it could have on the world of F1 and is under severe pressure to water down the proposed rules and find a compromise solution that does not impose the obligation to redo the machines by putting the projects back on track.
In short, it would be another rejection of the work done by the staff of Nicholas Tombazis. And even this second slating, after the no to the first draft of the DT039-2022, leads to a strong delegitimization of the FIA, never as weak as today, under attack both for the sporting management of the GPs by the two race directors, and for the technical management.
We said it: it will be a hot summer. Indeed hot …
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