FIA single-seater technical director Nikolas Tombazis explains how they will handle certain ideas from teams trying to find loopholes in 2022:
“It is hard to imagine that we can surpass the 2021 season in the first year of the new regulation. But it is important that we achieve the two goals we have set ourselves. To get the field closer together and to make it easier to follow another car. At the moment, about 3 seconds separate first from last. We hope that by the end of 2022 it will only be one and a half seconds. We still have to expect a bigger gap at the start of the season. But the cars will quickly become closer once teams find out what works.” – FIA head of single-seater technical matters Nicholas Tombazis explained, as reported by German magazine Auto Motor und Sport.
At the same time, he confirmed that the 2022 regulations are not set in stone. Tombazis: “I expect adjustments to be made during the season if things don’t work as they should.”
Nikolas Tombazis reveals that when it comes to rejecting certain ideas, it also depends on timing. “It makes a difference whether someone arrives with the idea in December or March. Now the team still has time to change. The longer the lead time, the stricter we will handle it.”
The FIA official doesn’t want to get into an exact prediction of how fast the 2022 Formula 1 cars will be. His feeling tells him that it will be more like one second instead of three – compared to the previous models. Due to the E10 fuel and new tyres, it‘s difficult to predict. Tombazis believes that all engines will be in a closer performance window. And if they don’t? “We have not yet reached an agreement among the manufacturers on how to react if one engine is far behind the others…” – he admitted.
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