2021 Regulations Released

[Nitrodaze]

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.