The 2021 Formula 1 season is turning out to be a spectacular one, yet Formula 1 chases more spectacle, more overtaking and more entertaining moments. Last Thursday before the British Grand Prix, the FIA and F1 presented a full-size model of a car designed to comply with its new regulations for the 2022 season.
Nikolas Tombazis and Ross Brawn, two former Ferrari members who today occupy top positions in the technical management of the International Federation and in the staff of the championship promoter, had only positive words for a 2022 car that will change its concept and make a clean break with the F1 that we are used to seeing now.
The objective sought with the ground-effect car is to make the single-seaters less sensitive as they get close behind another Formula 1 car, avoiding the loss of aerodynamic load that so often prevents an overtaking attempt. Careful studies have been carried out in the tunnel to ensure that those chasing behind can remain in the queue of the car of those in front without running the risk of jeopardizing the behaviour of their car when the driver is in dirty air.
For now, the opinions on the Formula 1 2022 are enthusiastic, even if we raise many doubts about the effectiveness of the choice, although the idea of adopting the ground effect can be shared in an attempt to bring a simplification in aerodynamics which, in particular with bargeboards, got to such an exasperation as to conceive excessively complex and very expensive elements.
But having made these necessary premises, for which the downforce will be generated by the two Venturi channels rather than by the wings, it is legitimate to wonder if the 2022 single-seaters will be able to meet the expectations when the technicians of the teams will have put their hands to it, interpreting the rules according to their purely performance and less voted intentions to the show.
Motosport Italy asked this question to Mattia Binotto, Ferrari team principal, after seeing the launch of the 2022 car in 1: 1 scale…
“I do not know. It is certainly in the premises and in the objectives of those who have thought of these rules so that we can have more closer racing as they have been defined with cars closer to each other. To begin with, for overtaking it will be necessary to have a faster car, but how much easier it will be to overtake will not be so obvious. I honestly see the data of our car and those of the wind tunnel and I don’t feel like saying that it will be easier to overtake.”
Mattia Binotto therefore gives us important information, because despite the very restrictive rules imposed by the FIA, the simulation data that emerge from the work of a top team suggests that the choice of ground-effect cars does not necessarily mean that it should automatically lead to an imporved show.
There is another aspect that has so far been little considered: will it be possible to see very different designs of the single-seaters for 2022 as compared to the model car they showed us at Silverstone?
“I like the question, the designs will not be different – continues Binotto – because the regulation is so restrictive that I believe we will reach convergence very quickly: once the architecture of the car and its concepts are defined, there will be little freedom. There are no more turning vanes, we only work on the wings, however simple, and on the floor and little else… “.
Mattia Binotto does not add anything else, but from the few words expressed clearly, it emerges that the doubts expressed at the time in particular by Ferrari and Mercedes could prove to be well founded: F1 pursuing the (right) cost reduction cannot and must not become similar to Indycar, but must keep intact its DNA made of research and innovation …
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