In the first three races of the 2023 Formula 1 championship, the main feeling that was experienced was that the new single-seaters are again having more difficulty keeping up with the cars in front of them.
The effect is that there has been a drop in overtaking, so there are already those who invoke the need to make corrections in the future. Despite the fact that there were four DRS zones in Australia, the situation did not seem to improve.
To talk about the current issues, Motorsport went to Nikolas Tombazis, FIA technical director of the single-seater sector, and Tim Goss who is his right-hand man. Here is their interview with Motorsport:
In Saudi Arabia we had noticed Charles Leclerc’s difficulty with Ferrari in getting close to his teammate, Carlos Sainz…
“Our data doesn’t say it – explains Nikolas Tombazis -. “We measure performance and still believe that the situation is much better than before. In fairness, there are one or two cars on the grid that are perhaps a little worse following others, but I won’t say which ones. But believe me we still haven’t reached the load losses as with the old regulation”.
“It remains clear that when behind another car there is a loss in performance, but we won’t go back to the levels from two years ago. Then of course as engineers develop their cars, there is a natural tendency to make the situation worse. It was to be expected.”
The FIA sees the numbers: can you tell us how things have changed?
“We have objective data – adds Tim Goss – which show us how disturbed the flow of air towards the following car is, therefore what it means in terms of loss of aerodynamic load. And we know what the previous single-seaters were like. We can make the comparison both with wind tunnel data and with track data. We set ourselves objectives that were decided before the technicians started the projects, so we were aware that with the development work they would limit some of the advantage we had achieved. But the situation is still better than before.”
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Can’t we go into more detail?
“I understand that you would like me to give you the numbers, but I can’t. The pressure drop increases the closer you get to the car in front of you”.
No data, but at least give us some general insights.
“Let’s put it this way – continues Nikolas Tombazis -: the 2023 data that we have collected is much closer to that of 2022 than last year’s numbers were to those of 2021”.
This regulation will remain valid until the end of 2025: it is easy to think that the situation is getting worse over time….
“But it’s normal when the car load increases. Let’s see what the orientation of the teams is and the configurations they bring to the track, but let’s collect information that will be useful in defining the 2026 regulation. A couple of things could have been done differently, but there is no doubt that there was an improvement in the situation compared to the 2021 single-seaters”.
Carlos Sainz believes that raising the edges of the floor by 15 mm would have had a negative effect because it pushes dirty air away from the car…
“I think there is some psychological conditioning in the analysis. There is no evidence of what he is saying ”.
“When we were looking at anti-porpoising measures on the table there were a variety of suggestions: we looked at all of them, not in comparison with the car in front, but also with the one behind and I don’t remember that the changes made had a significant effect on whoever is in the wake”.
Were you expecting more performance convergence as the gap appears to be opening?
“The group is more compacted – Goss insists – then there is a team that has done an exceptionally good job and we cannot rule against great ideas or their minds. Others have not done well this year and I expect that as they adjust their concepts there will be a different situation.”
Looking at the single-seaters, interesting solutions were observed, for example in the interpretation of the side bulkheads of the front wing: Mercedes in Miami had introduced slots that seemed to go against the spirit of the regulations, such as the many cuts on the floor. And this is where it gets interesting…
“We agree that there is a spirit of regulation – Tombazis takes the word again – but there is also a governance that guides F1. So we can’t just intervene and say we don’t like a solution. Stop that. If we see that there is a regulation interpretation that we believe is wrong, we can issue a technical directive to challenge its legality. But it is evident that we cannot change the regulation unilaterally without the approval of the teams…”.
Last year you accepted the rear wing bulkheads of the Aston Martin that had appeared in Hungary, but then you banned them for 2023: couldn’t the same be done for the front wing too?
“Sometimes there are solutions that interpret the regulations very borderline, but despite being perfectly legal, they go beyond the spirit in which they were written. So it is right that those who have invested resources do not see an idea rejected, but in these borderline cases we can give a more specific interpretation of the law and change the criteria that come into force from the following year”.
“In general, there are solutions that we don’t like, but which are perfectly legal: we can’t invent a reason to block them. And, therefore, we open a discussion where the rules are discussed, but we have to follow the governance. If we fail to get enough support from the teams, we suffer fixes that remain in place.”
The message is clear: if Liberty Media, which has 10 votes in the F1 Commission, just like the FIA and the teams, finds the support of the teams, the federal body is always in the minority. It clearly emerges that the Federation’s role in this context is very weak, being unable to affect the rules except by seeking a continuous compromise with the other protagonists at the table.
Last year the FIA rejected the front wing of Mercedes which in Austin had proposed flow deflectors as joining elements for the last two flaps, while this year Ferrari adopted a similar solution and it was accepted…
“The reason is simple – explains Tim -. The regulation was rewritten because it was not written clearly and left a certain subjectivity in the interpretation. We wrote a rewording that rules out what the purpose of the piece is, and its legality is now defined by size. We talked about it with the teams and in this case we found a good synthesis”.
“In other situations, changing the rules is more difficult, because depending on the times of application, the support of five rather than eight teams is needed. And it’s not easy…”
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