The FIA has accepted the quality of racing has deteriorated in Formula 1 in recent years as cars cannot follow each other closely.
The series made a major effort to reduce the ‘dirty air’ generated by cars with the technical regulations it introduced in 2022. But much of the progress made then has reversed over the following years, the FIA’s head of single-seater matters Nikolas Tombazis admitted.
“The 2022 cars started off with a significant improvement in their wake characteristics,” he said. “I don’t remember the exact numbers, but the loss of downforce at, say, 20 metres behind — if I remember correctly, and I’m risking saying slightly false numbers here — went from about 50% on the previous generation of cars to about 80 or 85% to start with on the 2022 cars.
“Then that gradually decayed during the regulation cycle to what it is now which – again I’m not entirely sure – but we are probably talking more like 70%. This is why we see that cars are currently struggling a bit more now following each other than in 2022, albeit still better than it was in 2021.”
That deterioration happened because teams added new aerodynamic devices to their cars which worsened the turbulence they generate, said Tombazis. “In some areas of the current generation regulations, some loopholes or unintended designs caused a significant worsening,” he explained.
“The front wing endplate area is one clear area where this happened, where the front wing endplates morphed into shapes that permitted quite a lot of outwash. The inside of the front brake drums also worsened the characteristics. The side of the floors was another one.
“All of these areas, little by little, contributed to the worsening of the characteristics of the current cars.”
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He has high hopes the new technical regulations F1 will introduce next year will allow the cars to follow more closely in the first year under the rules and in subsequent seasons.
“We think that in developing the regulations for ’26, we have learned a lot from that, and we hope we will maintain the good characteristics for a longer period, or hopefully not have this decay again,” he said. “There will definitely be some, but hopefully not as much as we had during this cycle.”
Compared to the approximate 80% downforce level within 20 metres of another car achieved in 2022, Tombazis said: “We believe that the start of the new cycle will be more like 90% or something like that. So we believe it’s going to be better than it’s ever been.”
Next year’s cars will have simpler aerodynamic surfaces and permit active adjustment of wings, allowing drivers to maximise downforce in the corners and minimise drag in the straights. The Drag Reduction System will be replaced with a new push-button overtaking power boost.
Tombazis said this will contribute to better racing next year. However he acknowledged the extent of the rules change is likely to cause a bigger spread in performance between teams.
“Clearly with new regulations one expects initially a slightly bigger spread of the grid,” he said, “but we do expect, from an aerodynamic point of view, cars to be able to follow each other much closer than now. The wake characteristics are much improved and we feel we’ve learned a lot from the 2022 cars to implement a lot of these learnings for the aerodynamic regulations this year.
“Then, of course, [there is] the transition from using DRS to energy as the tool to assist overtaking. That’s all going to change the nature and make it more unpredictable. That, together with the different aerodynamics, I think are going to make racing, ultimately, more exciting.”
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