The 2022 season really promises to be the year of the revolution in Formula 1. So far, in the long weeks of winter break, the focus has been on the very important innovations introduced at a technical level, with the new guidelines for the construction of the single-seaters that have had as the first result is the aesthetic change of the cars. However, the FIA has chosen to intervene quite significantly also on some relevant points of the sporting regulations, which will be modified with respect to the stability of recent years. Certainly the most important of these changes, on a practical level, concerns the lifting of the obligation to use at the start – for the drivers who had access to Q3 – the tires with which they had set their best time in Q2. This is in fact a confirmation of the rumors that had emerged since last summer.
The rule that bound the drivers to use the same tire with which they had passed the cut in Q2 in qualifying was originally designed to give an advantage to those who had been eliminated earlier, making the race strategy of the top ten on the grid less free. Over the years, however, two distinct problems have emerged: the first is linked to the fact that the best teams – Mercedes and Red Bull above all – often managed to overcome the cut with the least performing tire. In this way they guaranteed an additional advantage over the competition in the race. The second critical point instead concerned those who qualified in the last positions of the top-10, in ninth or tenth place. In fact, these pilots were strategically disadvantaged compared to rivals who started immediately behind them, in 11th, 12th and 13th position for example.
We therefore arrived at the paradox that for the center-group cars it was more convenient, from a race point of view, to take 11th or 12th place than 9th or 10th. Now it will no longer be like this. In fact, each rider will be able to decide to start from the grid on Sunday with the compound they prefer, regardless of what they did in qualifying. Obviously, the obligation remains to change compounds during the course of the Grand Prix in the event of a race held entirely in dry track conditions. It is likely that this new rule will increase the variety of strategies adopted by the teams, especially in the first races of the season. In fact, the teams will also have to measure the efficiency of the new 18-inch tires, introduced this year by Pirelli.
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