With the curtain now down on the 2021 World Championship, the attention of Formula 1 has totally shiftted to the new generation of cars that will debut in the next championship. The new technical cycle will see a profound revolution that will affect all areas, from aerodynamics to mechanics, without neglecting the standardization of some components and the transition to the new Pirelli tires with 18-inch rims. Ross Brawn, Managing Director of Formula 1, also believes that the new technical and sporting regulations can revive a working approach already seen in the past.
The cars for the 2021 Formula 1 season were largely the same as the previous championship, with the exception of limited structural and aerodynamic changes, as the Federation decided for a freezing development to limit costs in reaction to the economic-health crisis of the Coronavirus. Over the past year, the teams have gained experience and gained greater awareness of the potential of developing an existing car without designing a new chassis from scratch. Mercedes, for example, was able to make significant improvement during the year, managing to close the performance gap to Red Bull at the end of the championship starting from the W11 of 2020, unchanged in structure since the Brackley team did not invest the tokens for the development during the winter, contrary to the competition. The growth during the championship was minimally linked to the aerodynamic updates to the single-seater, introduced only in the Silverstone stage, while much of the credit is linked to the better definition of the set-up, in particular by increasing the rake angle.
On the basis of similar premises, Formula One managing director, motor sports and technical director Ross Brawn does not exclude that in the future teams may decide independently to reuse the same chassis for more than one season, as already happened in the past. The advantage would lie in being able to invest the resources limited by the budget cap in other areas. “I think we in Formula 1 have to consider whether we want to freeze some parts of the car,” said Ross Brawn to Tech Talk, the official technical in-depth program of Formula 1.
“I don’t think it’s something we should do initially, because everyone will first have to find their way with the new regulations. Someone could develop some innovations and others will copy them; therefore, let the situation stabilize for the next one or two years ”. In the last technical cycle from 2017 to 2021, for example, we saw how Mercedes was the first to propose the philosophy of the narrow nose, to which the other teams have progressively adapted, requiring intervention on the chassis in the front impact area. . Ferrari also initially proposed the lateral anti-intrusion cones in a lowered position, to raise the air intakes of the side radiators to the advantage of the aerodynamic exploitation of the floor. The rival teams have adopted the same solution in the following seasons, including the one that has just ended, with Aston Martin investing the two tokens to intervene on the body area last winter.
Although not immediately, Ross Brawn therefore believes that in the next technical cycle the idea of extending the life of the monocoques beyond the single championship could be evaluated. The reasons, however, do not lie in the nature of the technical regulation, but in the budget cap that the Federation is gradually putting into practice. “I think it’s realistic that some core components could have a cycle of two or three years and thus save teams from themselves,” continues Ross Brawn, “as they have discovered that attention to detail actually makes the difference, such as aerodynamics or suspension interventions. The teams can work with the existing machine structure and, with the resources at their disposal and in particular with the limitations of the budget cap, it is better that these resources are invested in other areas without changing the chassis every year ”.
An aspect not to be overlooked is also how from 2022 the power units will be frozen until 2025, which is why there will be no architecture changes such as to require corrections to the chassis for the installation of the engine. The return of multi-year life cycles for an F1 chassis therefore seems to be more plausible, pending evaluation of whether the hypothesis will materialize and above all if it will be a spontaneous choice of the teams or if it will be imposed by the Federation.
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