The F1 Commission, which met on Tuesday afternoon, not only discussed the rules that will govern the second qualifying session for the Saturday Sprint race, but also approved a series of measures. Among these, the decision was made to abandon the introduction of LED lights on the wheel covers from 2024.
The idea was interesting because the wheel covers could have become tools for offering easily readable information to fans through the use of LEDs, once the technology became optimised.
Already in the end-of-season 2021 tests in Abu Dhabi, McLaren had tried an LED light system on its single-seaters. The hope was that it could be useful for fans to better understand the race during qualifying or the race itself, by displaying positions or lap times, for example.
Mario Isola, head of Pirelli Motorsport, was never secretive about it: “When the technology is ready, the applications could be unlimited. We were told that positions, lap times, logos, or driver names could be displayed.”
However, the F1 Commission in terms of LED technology has decided to take a definite step back. The introduction of this curious communication system has been removed from the F1 regulations for 2024 with the abolition of Article 8.18, which read: “Depending on the availability of the necessary technology and in order to provide visual information to spectators, the FIA may require that each of the four wheel covers described in Article 3.13.7 be equipped with an LED display panel.”
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The decision was not made due to technical problems as further experiments have yielded positive results, but rather due to weight problems. The current single-seaters have a minimum weight of 798 kg, which is already considered excessive. With the introduction of ground-effect F1 cars equipped with 18-inch wheels, there has already been a significant increase in weight in the non-suspended part of the cars (the front wheels weigh an additional 2.5 kg, while the rear wheels weigh an additional 3 kg).
Since the general idea to reduce the weight of Formula 1 cars has been one of the technical issues of 2023, teams have stressed that they do not want to invest additional resources to get below the weight limit, preferring to give up LED communication on the wheel covers.
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