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  1. #1
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    2022 Regulations Released



    The new 2021 regulation introduces changes in three major areas of the sport:-

    1. Financial Regulation -
    Cost cap at $175 Million max per team. Thursday free practise has been scrapped. The race weekend is now Friday to Sunday. After the car has been scrutinized of Friday i think, it cannot be changed. A component with a different design cannot be placed on the car after.

    2. Aerodynamic -
    Simplified Aero features of the car. Barge boards are gone and there are limited areas for the teams to fettle with the wind flow characteristics of the car. Wind tunnel time has been drastically reduced with encouragement for teams to use CFD for simulations. The car would be 25kg heavier with bigger tyres as a consequence. A lot of the chassis parts are standardized, such as tyre rims, front wing, rear wing and floor of the car. Though there would be some areas where teams can individualized the look and feel of the car but limited to not introducing drag, such as the nose cone etc. Apart from that, all cars would look largely the same structurally.
    From 2021, the legality of a car shall be determined using a baseline CFD model to highlight conformance or non-conformance of a car.

    3.Powertrain
    The current Hybrid engine would continue to be used. But some parts would be standardized; Gearbox, Brakes, disc material and suspensions. Engine is expected to be heavier as some of its parts are to be simplified. There was no mention of changes to the current fuel consumption levels. But there was talk about looking in the future to reducing the carbon footprint of the F1 car. No mention was made as to how they plan to do this or a clear roadmap for attaining a particular target in the future. So the environment was thrown around during the presentation for soundbite value rather than a real commitment to reducing impact to the environment.


    I shall look at the rules in detail and write a more thorough explanation of it. My first impression, l think the relevance of F1 to the automobile industry appears to be slightly diluted by the standardization of many components of the F1 car. The scope for new ingenuity seem to be frozen out. Mainly because the technology battle between teams has been largely neutralized under the cost constraints and introduction of many standardized parts to the car.

    That said, this car promisess to allow much closer racing. On paper, it appears to level the playing field somewhat, giving privateer teams a shot at winning championship titles. But that remains to be seen. Teams with better resources would still find a away to keep ahead of the pack with clever use of their resources. They would have better operational efficiency and more sofisticated practises. Even so, there is a good chance that experienced privateer teams like Mclaren or Williams may find a way to the very front of the grid.

    This new era is now more about the quality of drivers that each team possesses. The drivers and engine makes the main difference to the performance of the team relative to their rivals. The cars would aerodynamically be more or less similar to each other we are led to believe.

    The other thing l noticed about the release, was that the teams were not present in a show of support for the new regulation. When asked about whether the teams have signed up for this regulation, the answer given was vague and suggested that, acceptance of the new regulation by the teams is forthcoming and may not neccessarily be there. There was an air of cautious expectation amonst the media, we shall find out the real situation in due course l think.
    Last edited by Nitrodaze; 17th July 2021 at 23:17. Reason: incorrect heading
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    The first thing two things they have to do is get rig on mandatory stop and forced use of multiple compounds. The ebb and flow of the race changes to a more natural way, and give the best opportunity for weaker cars to go for more aggressive tactics, which the better/best cars are more vulnerable to, but without compromising the merit/authenticity of the result.

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    I'll tell you something else, the "budget restraints: are also a load of BS. It wont affect the big team that already spend over it, as they've already spent their money on their cars, and there's only incremental gain to now get. It'll save them money while they'll still be the front runners and there won't be wild fluctuations in form.

    The "salary cap" would still mean most of the team have to more than what they already do, and that money is hard to gain.

    If they were serious about a "salary cap", they have to have completely new regs, and set the cap at something like $30mil, which is attainable for a lot of teams when the prospect is of racing in F1.

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    With the team budget caps and lots of spec parts, it seems like the rules will force more money to be sent into engine development by the engine manufacturers, and then the factory and works teams will prevail over customer teams.

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    Quote Originally Posted by zako85 View Post
    With the team budget caps and lots of spec parts, it seems like the rules will force more money to be sent into engine development by the engine manufacturers, and then the factory and works teams will prevail over customer teams.
    But the Engine manufacturer teams must give the same engine they use to their customer team. Technically, there should be no difference in performance there.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Nitrodaze View Post
    But the Engine manufacturer teams must give the same engine they use to their customer team.

    They do?

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    I think they are moving in the right direction if we want closer racing on track. Though the current cars are better than some years in this respect, it's obvious that the aero wake is still disrupting a following car quite a lot, and a car has to be significantly quicker to make a pass on track in many cases.

    For at least a couple decades too much influence on the WDC and constructors championships have been made by the cars. Not to say that the best drivers aren't obvious, as they usually are. But I think we all know that if the drivers and cars were shuffled that we have very capable drivers in cars that have no chance of winning, and would be lucky to ever make a podium finish. With the rules changes intending to shift more to drivers skill, we might see a shuffling of the standings that most of us don't suspect.

    For the sake of close racing, I hope the new regs are a move in the right direction. I'd love to see races where any one of 4-5 teams is fighting for a win.

  8. Likes: Tazio (15th November 2019)
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    Quote Originally Posted by airshifter View Post
    I think they are moving in the right direction if we want closer racing on track. Though the current cars are better than some years in this respect, it's obvious that the aero wake is still disrupting a following car quite a lot, and a car has to be significantly quicker to make a pass on track in many cases.

    For at least a couple decades too much influence on the WDC and constructors championships have been made by the cars. Not to say that the best drivers aren't obvious, as they usually are. But I think we all know that if the drivers and cars were shuffled that we have very capable drivers in cars that have no chance of winning, and would be lucky to ever make a podium finish. With the rules changes intending to shift more to drivers skill, we might see a shuffling of the standings that most of us don't suspect.

    For the sake of close racing, I hope the new regs are a move in the right direction. I'd love to see races where any one of 4-5 teams is fighting for a win.
    If the new regulations deliver on its promise, the racing is not going to be much different than the F2 racing. It is still going to be down to team efficiency at race weekends, quality of driver and engine power. The best drivers are still going to top the points table and the best teams are going to top the constructors table because they would have the best drivers in their car, have a more efficient operation and have as good an engine as the best on the grid.

    The new regulation would be worth all the fuss if the constitution of the sharp end changes regularly from race to race. This would mean that one team do not run away with the championship as we are used to. I think this is a tall ask. Hence, l would not be surprised if the status quo do not change much from what we have now. The first season of the new regulations must deliver without the usual excuses that we have come to hear from the F1 promoters in recent years.
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    What do you think? Has the 2021 F1 regulation defined a new fomula or is it a true evolution of F1?

    I am still struggling with the absence of the engineering competition between the constructors. That absence makes me wonder if the 2021 regulation is true to F1's heritage. It seems the promoters have become a virtual F1 team responsible for designing the car and the teams are suppose to build a car of that design strictly and race it against other similarly built cars. In fairness, l think we have a new fomula in reality. They have called it F1, maybe it should have been called GP1.
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    One very interesting aspect of the new regulation is the introduction of opensource to facilitate free technology sharing amongst the teams. The concept allows any team to innovatively develop a new component or part for their car but can share the basic design of the component with the rest of the grid. Allowing other teams to develop and improve on the design and share it with everyone else as well.

    Clearly this takes a leaf from the open source software paradym that has benefited us all with operating systems like Linux etc. The implementation of opensource in the regulation is not voluntary but mandatory. Which forces innovation to be shared. Unfortunately this may inhibit innovation as few teams would be inclined to give away their competitive advantage invented at their own cost and using their own resources. And not being able to use that innovation to gain significant competitve advantage and the rewards that comes with finishing ahead of the competition from their ingenuity.

    Where there are no or little inherent performance enhancement involved, l can see this area being lively with ideas, concepts and standardization of components in the future. Or at least the introduction of standards for various common components or parts evolving organically from sharing and mutual cooperation amongst the teams.

    But, in reality of the competitive jungle of racing where every tiny bit here and there on the car translates to competitive advantage, there is a strong culture of selfishness that drives success in the sport which might take some time to give way for this opensource concept to evolve.

    In this selfish competitve culture it is unclear if a voluntary opensource scheme would be more effective than forced sharing as imposed by the regulation. This is the main assult on the technology competition between the constructors that has made F1 unique among all other racing formula. And my main reason for having the opinion that the new regulation introduces a new formula which essentially replaces F1 as we know it.

    One could argue that F1 has died a sudden death and a lookalike has been slipped in its place to foster continuity. Another perspective would be to say that the technology competition aspect of f1 has brought about spells of one team dominating for a period of time. Thus, we end up with a two tier grid of sharp end and midfield teams. You could also argue that it is the root cause driving up spending in F1. But is that really the case?
    Last edited by Nitrodaze; 24th December 2019 at 20:35.
    Better a witty fool than a foolish wit.
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