The FIA World Council has approved a ban on wind tunnel and CFD work on the 2026 cars until January 1, 2025. This decision will mean that all available budget two years from now will be allocated to the new F1 cars. As a result, the cars competing in the final championship under the current regulations will be derived from those of 2024. It will be even more crucial not to make mistakes in the winter choices. But can the GPs afford a decline in interest before the new rules?
Is James Allison’s prophecy coming true? In an article published by Motorsport.com on October 19, the technical director of Mercedes explained that “…it will be important to start the 2024 season on the right foot, even more than usual because, with the new regulations of 2026 on the horizon, we are talking about a new car that must be designed in 2025. It is very likely that the 2025 F1 cars will have to be close cousins to those of 2024. And, therefore, it will be doubly important to have a competitive vehicle next year if we want to have good championships while waiting for 2026.”
After the FIA World Council meeting in Baku approved the rule preventing F1 teams from conducting CFD studies and wind tunnel research on the 2026 cars before January 1, 2025, it will be evident that the budget for research and development of the cars that will race in the last year of the current regulations will be redirected to the machines of the following year.
Probably the delay was decided because there is still no approved technical regulation for 2026, on the chassis and aerodynamics side, as it is still being defined (the idea is to have smaller and lighter cars for greater efficiency). However, the decision will undoubtedly have very important side effects.
If the actual design work is compressed into 2025 alone, it will be evident that technicians will try to spend all available resources to enter the new F1 with the most competitive vehicle, allowing the car of that year to be a direct derivation of the 2024 model.
It’s correct to say that it is not a new trend for recent F1 history: the ground-effect car regulations were postponed by a year during the COVID period (from 2021 to 2022), and the FIA, in agreement with the teams, decided to lock in the design of the new cars until 2021 with a similar measure to the one adopted these days.
The difference was that they had to come out of a pandemic, and teams risked blowing up without having the necessary financial resources to plan for the future due to the contraction of investments precisely because of COVID. In that very intricate situation, the action of the F1 promoter had been providential, managing the championship by seeking COVID-free GPs, overcoming organizational, logistical, and economic difficulties.
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Now the scenario, fortunately, is completely different: teams are in good shape, F1 is experiencing a moment of great notoriety, but it must be careful not to lose this positive trend by consolidating the Red Bull and Max Verstappen dominance cycle.
Christian Horner has clearly stated that in 2024, there will be greater convergence at the top thanks to regulatory stability, adding that Red Bull cannot repeat the 2023 record of wins (21 races out of 22 on the calendar!), but the ambition will be to secure the fourth driver’s title with Max Verstappen, relying on technical superiority that the Milton Keynes team will know how to transfer to the next season.
But if Horner’s scenario were to intersect with Allison’s prediction, well then we would find ourselves in a situation where we could assign the next two championships to the Dutch driver, registering, however, an inevitable decline in interest while the engines warm up for the 2026 cars with the new power units that will have half the power supplied by electrical energy.
Can F1 afford cars that will essentially be those we will see next year? It becomes evident how important it will be not to make mistakes in the winter choices because the effects could be seen not in one but in two championships.
Then, don’t complain…
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