Neutrality versus intervention. This was the great technical-legal debate that characterized the 2022 Formula 1 championship. On the one hand there are those who asked for the status quo to be maintained, on the other those who wanted an ongoing change. We can thus briefly summarize the clash of these two blocks: Mercedes asked for changes to limit aerodynamic bouncing, Red Bull and Ferrari hoping that things would not change. Both sides, as expected, pushed for their own personal gain.
These two divergent ideas also characterized the decision-making process that took place within the International Federation which, after the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, imposed a limitation by introducing a new metric to keep under control the porpoising seen at the Baku race. The controversial Technical Directive 039 had a very long and perhaps excessive preparation period given that it came into force in Belgium, when the bouncing had almost completely disappeared.
Did the FIA’s action therefore come too late? The answer could be yes if we read the opinions of two key figures from the institution with headquarters in Paris: Nikolas Tombazis and Pat Symonds. The Greek engineer, technical manager of the FIA single-seaters, underlined the need to take action to combat the phenomenon of porpoising. This generated the disappointment of some teams who felt penalized, even if the track has not given confirmation in this sense.
The package of changes to the technical regulations introduced for the Spa Francorchamps race was officially aimed at minimizing the vertical oscillations of the cars. However, months later, the feeling persists that a substantial part of the actions of the governing-control-judgment body had the objective of regulating the gray area skilfully exploited by the designers in relation to the flexibility of the floor. Nikolas Tombazis himself confirms it:
“The way the regulations were written allowed for a bit of, shall we say, unwanted tricks. For this reason we have clarified the regulation with a technical directive and have made some changes to the regulation. There are two areas of the regulation where we can act unilaterally without the approval of the F1 Commission. One concerns rigidity, Article 3.15, and the other security. This has given us the capacity to act on this front.”
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Pat Symonds, Chief Technical Officer of the FIA, highlighted how the governing body has perhaps been too pressing with his action. Opposite point of view to that of Nikolas Tombazis: “I think that the Federation has exaggerated a bit after Baku” – admitted the former Benetton man in an interview for Auto Motor und Sport – “In Azerbaijan we saw the worst possible impact of porpoising because a team had tried something that didn’t work and he raised his voice. But if the FIA hadn’t intervened, the problems would have been solved anyway because most of the teams had figured out how to keep the bouncing under control.”
The statement expressed by the technician should not be overlooked. Pat Symonds then candidly admitted that they too, as the technical committee that wrote the reference standards, had not foreseen the undesirable effect of the new generation of cars based on Venturi channels: “Porpoising was not in our radar, I confess. But it should have been there because we had a chance to find out in advance because we worked with dynamic simulations. And I should have known too, because I’ve worked on ground effect cars before, but I’d just forgotten.” – he admitted.
And perhaps it is precisely what is behind this admission that has convinced the Federation to act. Those who write the rules are often less equipped with tools than those who have to respect them. Was the FIA overly cautious? Perhaps, but it was a necessary process to avoid further negative drifts. So much so that, in 2023, it was decided to set more solid regulation changes that shouldn’t lead to other changes during the 2023 Formula One season.
It is therefore clear that the 2023 technical rules are the result of an internal disagreement within the FIA. But there is nothing to be scandalized about. Decision-making processes are very often the result of compromises between apparently distant instances that find a point of synthesis after negotiations and close comparisons. The International Federation, therefore, does not escape the typical habit of democratic debates in which the line of the individual does not win to the detriment of the mass.
Whether the reference rules identified will be effective is another matter. We will only discover this during the 2023 F1 calendar.
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