Formula 1 believes "ground effect cars will improve by five seconds"

Formula 1 believes “ground effect cars will improve by five seconds”. F1 believes "ground effect cars will improve by five seconds".

Less speed, more spectacle: Formula 1, by introducing the ground effect concept again starting with the 2022 championship, immediately sacrificed the possibility of lowering the lap records on track to give drivers the opportunity to follow each other more easily, therefore giving them more chances of overtaking. The DRS is still essential to successfully perform overtaking moves since the tow effect is less amplified, but the point of view of intensity and emotions, the races are objectively more exciting since the drivers can stay closer to the competitors for longer without this causing significant damage to the tires in terms of temperatures and degradation.

The current rules and regulations will last until the 2025 Formula 1 season and in 2026 the new power units without MGU-H will be introduced. Starting from 1 September, the development of the current engines will also be definitively frozen for the hybrid part and therefore from 2023 to 2025 the performance gains will come from the refinement of the ground-effect cars that have started their journey in this 2022 F1 campaign.

Nikolas Tombazis, Technical Director of the FIA single-seater division, expects considerable growth in terms of performance during the next Formula 1 seasons: “The cars still have a lot of room for development – he said in an exclusive interview for Italian website FormulaPassion – I believe that by next year we will begin to have a greater convergence and, if we do nothing in particular, within this regulation cycle I expect a gain of a couple of seconds in the first year and then a second in the following years. So I expect about five seconds in total over three to four years.” – he added.

In any case, performance was never the priority when the new technical regulation was drafted, as explained by the Technical Director of the FIA single-seater division: “The absolute level of performance is not important to us. If a car goes faster or slower than three seconds per lap, that’s not what makes it more or less spectacular. Clearly, if it went at half speed it would be another matter, but within normal levels we are not particularly concerned about this ” – Nikolas Tombazis concluded.