But while there is no doubt that great strides have been made in improving the cars’ ability to follow each other more closely, the past season has not been without its flaws.
Red Bull’s dominance meant the battle for the championship was pretty much a win-win after the summer break and, although some races were good, it was not the dramatic improvement some had hoped for.
As one of the key architects who helped bring about the planned racing revolution, outgoing F1 motorsport managing director Ross Brawn readily admits things weren’t perfect.
He insists, however, that getting it all right would have been a utopian dream, especially considering that some of the key issues that overshadowed the start of the season were more down to team actions than anything to do with the game. F1.
Asked by Motorsport.com about his score out of 10 for the success of the new rules, Brawn said: “I think like eight or nine out of 10, [which] was where we wanted to be.
“I think we probably wouldn’t have done a few things in retrospect. If you remember, there was a period where teams were saying the rules were too restrictive and the cars all looked the same.
“As a result, under pressure, we slacked off a bit and gave more freedom in various areas. But the consequence of that was that we were taken advantage of! But that’s Formula 1, you know that. will happen.”
‘Sucked’ into porpoising
Carlos Sainz, Ferrari F1-75, battle with Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes W13
Photo by: Carl Bingham / Motorsport Images
The biggest talking point in the early races was porpoising, which affected the majority of the grid – and proved to be the biggest headache for Mercedes during the year.
Brawn admits that while F1 chiefs and the FIA were well aware of the potential for ground effect to trigger a porpoise comeback, they didn’t expect things to be as bad as they are. were.
But he also suggests that some teams have become hungry for downforce gains that were theoretically there if you ran close to the ground, but couldn’t be achieved in the real world.
“I think porpoising was obviously a bigger problem than we anticipated,” he explained.
“A ground effect car, by definition, can porpoise because of the very concept. And those of us who went through that years ago were probably more aware of how you should approach these things – and Adrian [Newey] in particular, I don’t think their car had few problems.
“We all know that with a ground effect car you can’t drive it solid, close to the ground. It’s just too critical. And I think some teams got sucked in, excuse the pun , to see how much performance there would be if you rolled the car low to the ground and as hard as you could but, in the real world, you couldn’t do that.
“Then they were stuck, because they designed a car to run in that regime. And it was quite difficult to get out of it: especially since they saw the loss of performance they suffered in coming out, which they didn’t want to give up.
“But I think they’ve all found a good compromise now. We haven’t changed the rules and there are very few porpoises going on now. So it was a bit of a hiccup with the start and that was a bit of a distraction, which was a shame.”
Run closer to each other
Charles Leclerc, Ferrari F1-75, Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB18
Photo by: Alastair Staley / Motorsport Images
While the aim of the 2022 rules was to allow cars to run closer together, with a view to increasing the chances of overtaking, drivers said the improvements were not overnight.
In fact, Sebastian Vettel wondered if the gains were ultimately worth it for all the expense and effort put into creating new rules.
“They’ve always been tricky, but let’s put it this way: the big effort this year has been to make the cars able to overtake and follow much closer. But I don’t think there’s a big difference.” , said the four-time F1 champion.
“We follow closer, but we have less drag, so you have to be closer to overtake too. no more.”
“So, I don’t want to say it failed. But for sure a lot of effort was put in and not all of the effort was successful, let’s put it that way.”
Brawn says that without active aerodynamics to deliberately hamper the cars in front, it will be impossible to create a race car as fast behind as it drives on its own.
However, he suggests there have been a number of under-the-radar improvements that have made a big difference to the quality of racing.
“What’s often not talked about, which we’ve become more aware of as we get into it, is side-to-side interference,” he said.
“We all think of back-to-back, but what we didn’t appreciate until we started doing the work and made the models where we could run two cars near one of them. ‘other is the impact of being side by side had.
“So those scenarios where you see a driver trying to hold a tight line around a corner and a guy comes alongside him and he drifts – he’s lost his downforce. As soon as that car gets alongside him, he loses the grip. And we didn’t have ‘I enjoyed that storyline so much.
Ross Brawn, Managing Director of Motorsport, FOM
Photo by: Carl Bingham / Motorsport Images
“With these cars it’s a lot less as well. So I think these wheel-to-wheel battles that we see where there are two cars, or sometimes even three cars, go through the corners – I think they have a lot more trust that they are nothing strange will happen.
“And the other comment I got from the drivers – because I was pretty excited when we showed these cars – is that they’re predictable.
“The balance doesn’t change drastically. So you lose downforce, but you know what the car is doing. You don’t get the kind of understeer, oversteer – you don’t get the unpredictability you had last year.” “
Brawn also thinks it is wrong to make a direct comparison between old cars and new cars, as sticking to the previous formula would have left F1 on a downward trajectory.
“We have to remember that the cars we had were getting worse and worse,” he said. “And continuously, continuously along the way, they only got worse and worse.
“So who knows what a 2022 car would have looked like if we had let them go on for another year? And who knows what a 2023 would have looked like if we had let them go on for another year?
“So not only did we find what I think was a much better direction, but we stopped the descent into some undriveable cars that we had in front of us.”
A new state of mind
Stefano Domenicali, CEO, Formula 1 and Ross Brawn, Managing Director Motorsport, walk on FOM track
Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images
Perhaps the greatest success of the rules, according to Brawn, is nothing tangible on the track, it’s the impact they have had on the attitudes of decision-makers.
He showed that there are only benefits of regulations being developed and promoted as a way to make things more exciting.
“I think it has been a great success and I think what is important is that the principle has now been approved, and should now be very high, if not at the top of the list of any future rule changes, [which is] how racy are these cars?
“I think we’ve seen that both anecdotally on the trail and objectively on the data. Even the doubters, and there were doubters as to whether it was worth it, they raised their hands and said said ‘no, certainly a lot better than it was’.”
