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Last month, F1 sprinkled their latest breadcrumbs leading to what will ultimately become the
big 2021 changes. We’ve been banging on about this for a long, long time now but F1
is really aiming to make 2021 a huge year for change when they correct a lot of the
wayward aspects of the sport and lay a new path for its future.
So while this video is a little bit late compared to the news release, 2021 is still miles away
and- oh. Wow, OK, they really are pushing this fine, aren’t they?
OK, so let’s break down the core principles the Formula One are looking to focus on in
their mission to improve F1 for all. One - Making the cars more raceable.
So basically at the moment the cars aren’t really able to race against each other as
well as we’d like. Sure, we’ve had a string of good races but we really want to be able
to guarantee similarly matched cars can have a go at each other at every race, right?
Thanks to some terrible choices made in revamping the cars in 2017, once a car gets within two
car lengths of the car in front, it loses about half of its downforce. I mean, it was
bad already but it’s worse now. The aim is to drop this downforce loss to
about 5-10% and apparently this is looking good according to the models they’re working
with so far. Downforce loss in following a car is bad in
a couple of ways. First, it means you lose masses of time through the corners so you’re
always slower and further behind once you try and give chase through the next straight.
Secondly, it kills the tyres. The dirty air in the wake of a car affects the front wing
aero much more than any other area of the car so the forces on the car unbalance and
work the tyres in completely unideal ways. Currently the downforce on an F1 car is split
roughly 20% from each wing and 60% from the underbody and diffuser.
F1 wants to shift this much more towards the underbody by bringing back ground effect (which
you can see more of in *this* video) and simplifying the wings so the sensitive overbody aero is
less important to the stability of the car. The tyres are also changing from 13 inch to
18 inch wheels with F1 asking Pirelli to completely change their approach to design. Pat Symonds
thinks it was wrong to push Pirelli into making high degradation tyres as it’s made drivers
focus more on tyre management than out and out racing.
Instead, we’re now looking at tyres that can be pushed and pushed. However, we’re
still in favour of pit stops being an important part of the race so the tyres can’t last
forever. This is a tricky thing to prepare for as you either have tyres that degrade
in a predictable way no matter how hard they’re pushed or you have tyres that suddenly drop
off a cliff at a certain point. The former seems likely, particularly as tyre
blankets will likely be outlawed. At the moment F1 cars are hilariously bad on cold tyres
and so the tyres are heated to 80 and 100 degrees Celcius before they’re put on the
cars. But the new generation tyres will be able
to function across a wide temperature range as with lots of other racing series. And with
rubber that’s less tyre sensitive come rubber that shouldn’t freak out as it degrades.
The second Core Principle is making the grids more competitive.
Here in the year 2019 we don’t just have this huge gap in performance between the front
end of the grid and the back of the grid, but we also have a huge gap between the front
of the grid and the middle of the grid. Again, this is reflected in the championship
table with the points being hugely skewed to one end.
Ideally, we’d want to make grids far less predictable and put many more cars and drivers
in contention for good places. This will also allow more drivers and teams
to compete for better championship positions across the year and make more seats actually
worthwhile for the best drivers on the grid. At the moment we could have lots of title-contention
worthy drivers out there that would be wasted if they weren’t in a Mercedes. What good
would it be for Verstappen to get stuck at Renault, currently? We need it to be true
that a driver can make a difference. Now, this is where some compromise comes in
that some F1 fans may flinch at by I agree with Ross Brawn that it’s for the greater
good. The aero looks like it will be much more prescriptive
- that is, the teams will have a lot of freedom taken away in how they can develop the cars.
The amount of elbow room they currently have is driving a wedge in competition, particularly
between the rich and poor. The way Brawn puts it is that he wants a ‘good,
moderately funded team’ to be able to ‘cause a lot of trouble’. You know - a Racing Point
may be able to win an occasional race and if Mercedes and Ferrari continue to be front
runners a mistake could really cost them as the midfield will be right there instead of
half a lap behind. A bad race could have serious championship
consequences with a tighter field. You know how Sainz is currently grinding on Gasly?
Well that - but all the way down the field. Brawn wants the difference between the best
and the worst to be in the region of tenths, not seconds. And I think we all do.
Some of the ideas being funnelled into the blueprints include taking even more driver
aids away, which will mean some restrictions in how the software takes over and some of
the clever mechanical systems that take control away from the driver.
They also want to reduce car-to-pit telemetry. Essentially, the many, many sensors on the
car send live information to computers in the pits and back at the team HQ. The computers
crunch all that data and start forming strategies and suggestions for how to run the race and
drive the car. This takes a huge amount of resources and hands over race management to
computers instead of the driver. F1 wants to hand a lot of the management back
to the driver so they spend less time being coached by their engineer. Removing a lot
of the live sensory communication between the car and the pits will do a lot to stymy
this. Much more than the hilarious attempt to restrict what engineers could verbally
say that F1 tried a few years back. OK - the third core principle - the Wow Factor.
F1 wants aesthetically pleasing cars; the kind of machine you’d wanna stick on your
wall and gawp at. This is something I’m less bothered about
personally as I think the other stuff is more of a priority but I know it’s important
to a lot of fans and why not crack this while you’re doing all the other stuff?
One person’s sexy is another person’s horror show, though so F1 is looking to consult
with fans to find out what they want from the cars’ looks.
I think… I think this is a bad idea. Stick to consulting with automobile designers (which
they absolutely are doing) to meet the technical needs in the sexiest way possible.
Fans (and I absolutely include me in this) think they know what they want, but they really
don’t. And they certainly don’t know how to make it happen.
With proper, modern designers on hand to offer advice I’m sure F1 will do a brilliant,
wonderful job on the 2021 cars that will completely divide opinion among fans.
And finally the fourth core principle - Financial Viability.
Costs are undeniably out of control and the gap between the rich and the poor teams is
too high when what you really want is a sustainable, competitive sport.
It should be easier and cheaper to compete. We should take success away from those with
the most resources and towards those with the most talent and ingenuity.
To that end, F1 are aiming to standardise a lot of parts that really don’t need to
be endlessly meddled with for tiny advantages. Wheel rims, brakes, radiators, etc. None of
that needs 4000 hours and half a million pounds of R&D spent on it.
On top of this they’ll further restrict certain areas, like in the use of exotic materials
(that is, rare expensive materials that offer some slight advantage), banning of hydraulic
suspension, freezing gearboxes and other restrictions that focus the team to work on things that
actually matter. They also want to reduce allowed wind tunnel
time, how big teams can be, how many staff can be brought to the race, and capping costs
across the organisation instead of key talent like drivers and top end managers and marketing.
Basically, the overall aim is to bring the focus back to the track and less on the 24/7
R&D and computer crunching going on back in mostly middle England.
Development is a key part of Formula One but the focus should always be on the actual racing.
Designing the world’s slickest, aerodynamic wheel nuts means absolutely nothing in the
big picture. F1, the FIA and the teams are continuing to
work closely together on this which, on the one hand, is good as many perspectives will
bring more to the table and reduce blind spots. On the other hand, each party has their own
agenda so Ross Brawn has to manage the inputs carefully to ensure the best overall result
for the sport. We should have the final rules published in
October (which is hilarious, considering the lead times on car designs) and then F1 aims
to have continued discussion and development of the rules as time goes on.
If you’re nervous then… yeah, so am I. It’s all running very close to the wire
and very much behind closed doors. I have faith in Ross Brawn though so let’s hope
he can get everyone on board and we can all go racing together, better than before.
Now… bearing in mind I just said we fans have no idea what we want - and I stand by
that… Tell me what you think in the comments below! Just cause it’s hard to nail an opinion
doesn’t mean yours isn’t valid. What is F1 but a long series of being proved completely
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