Past, present and future
Waiting for the adults technical changes expected for the season 2026Formula 1 looks to the present to analyze the regulations introduced starting from the World Cup 2022. In that year, with the return of ground effect, the Circus experienced several innovations especially in the aerodynamic field, even if some of them led to consequences that were not very pleasant for teams and drivers.
The most discussed cases
Above all, the phenomenon of bouncing or of porpoisingwith car bounces particularly suffered by Mercedes especially in 2022. With the passage of time, these problems have gradually reduced (not completely disappeared), but the McLaren Team Principal, Andrea Stellawants to remember these difficulties so that the mistakes of the past are no longer repeated with the new technical regulations that will be introduced in 2026.
Unwanted challenges
In a meeting with the media, the Umbrian engineer was quite clear on the issue: “From a technical and engineering point of view, I believe the 2022 regulations have surprised with some unwanted challenges – has explained – we've come a long way to understand these challenges, and that's why these cars are so much more comfortable to drive now, but they can still be quite complicated. If you look at high-speed sectors, they still tend to bounce around a bit, you get a bit of porpoising, and the cars can get quite jumpy because of this. So it's not just about comfort, but also how much the car becomes at the limit when it starts to experience these dynamic oscillations.”
Hope for 2026
While taking into consideration the research done before 2022, Stella believes it is convenient to carefully follow the recent technological developments that will favor the creation of the new single-seaters from 2026: “All this knowledge should be taken into account in the design of the 2026 regulations – he added – especially if it is a derivation with smaller cars, as we intend to do, but, fundamentally, a derivation of the ground effect cars that we are currently using. It would be inconvenient and an incomplete job if, in 2026, the cars had similar problems to those in 2022 or if unintentional problems occurred again, because we still have time to study, and even the tools have improved further in a few years. We should hit the ground in good shape in 2026, because what happened in 2022 was very challenging and, at times, was uncomfortable for the riders. In some cases it was extreme and dangerous because the cars became quite unstable. So we absolutely have to aim for better form, and now we have the tools to do it.”
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