With the curtain now down on the 2021 World Championship, the attention of Formula 1 is totally turned to the new generation of cars that will debut in the next championship. The new technical cycle will see a profound revolution that will affect all areas, from aerodynamics to mechanics, without neglecting the standardization of some components and the transition to the new Pirelli tires with 18-inch rims. Ross Brawn, Managing Director of Formula 1, also believes that the new technical and sporting regulations can revive a working approach already seen in the past in the category.
The 2021 season had the cars already protagonists in the previous championship at the center, with the exception of limited structural and aerodynamic changes, with the Federation freezing development to limit costs in reaction to the economic-health crisis of the Coronavirus. In the last year the teams have gained experience and gained greater awareness of the potential of developing an existing car without designing a new frame from scratch. Mercedes, for example, has expressed an excellent progression during the year, managing to close the performance gap from Red Bull at the end of the championship starting from the W11 of 2020, unchanged in structure since the Brackley team did not invest the tokens for the development during the winter, contrary to the competition. The growth during the championship was minimally linked to the aerodynamic updates to the single-seater, introduced only in the Silverstone stage, while much of the credit is linked to the better definition of the set-up, in particular by increasing the rake angle. “As the season progressed, we improved our understanding of the car”, Hamilton explained. “We were able to extract better potential from the package without bringing any updates. From Silverstone we have not had any evolutionary packages, which is why it is quite phenomenal to see the improvements we have achieved ”.
On the basis of similar premises, Ross Brawn does not exclude that in the future the teams may decide independently to reuse the same chassis for more than one season, as already happened in the past in Formula 1. The advantage would lie in being able to invest the resources limited by the budget cap. in other areas. “I think we in Formula 1 have to consider whether we want to freeze some parts of the car“, comments Brawn a Tech Talk, the official Formula 1 technical in-depth program. “I don’t think that’s something we should do initially, because everyone will have to find their way with the new regulations first. Someone could develop some innovations and others will copy them; therefore, let the situation stabilize for the next one or two years ”. In the last technical cycle from 2017 to 2021, for example, we saw how Mercedes was the first to propose the philosophy of the narrow nose, to which the other teams have progressively adapted, requiring intervention on the chassis in the front impact area. . Ferrari also initially proposed the lateral anti-intrusion cones in a lowered position, to raise the air intakes of the side radiators and thus streamline the bellies in the lower area, to the advantage of the aerodynamic exploitation of the bottom. The rival teams have adopted the same solution in the following seasons, including the one that has just ended, with Aston Martin investing the two tokens to repair the body last winter.
Even if not immediately, Ross Brawn therefore believes that in the next technical cycle the idea of extending the life of the monocoques beyond the single championship could come back into vogue. The reasons, however, do not lie in the nature of the technical regulation, but in the ceiling on the expenses that the Federation is gradually putting into practice. “I think it is realistic that some main components can have a cycle of two or three years and thus save the teams from themselves”, continues Brawn, “Because they discovered that in reality it is attention to detail that makes the difference, such as aerodynamics or suspension interventions. Stables can work with the existing machine structure and, with the resources at their disposal and in particular with the limitations of the budget cap, it is better that these resources are invested in other areas without changing the loom every year ”. An aspect not to be overlooked is also how from 2022 the power units will be frozen until 2025 inclusive, which is why there will be no architecture changes such as to require corrections to the frame for the installation of the engine. The return of multi-year life cycles for monocoque therefore seems to be more plausible, pending evaluation of whether the hypothesis will materialize and above all if it will be a spontaneous choice of the teams or if instead it will be imposed by the Federation.
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