In order to combat F1’s overtaking conundrum, the FIA approved revisions to the front and rear wings last week after ongoing meetings with the sport’s Strategy Group and constructors.
The changes will enable cars to follow each other more closely without suffering overwhelming negative effects from turbulence given off by the lead car. However, the compromise is a reduction in aerodynamic performance and an increase in lap times. Nikolas Tombazis, head of the FIA’s single-seater committee, said:
“We expect this new change to be approximately one-third of the way less performance of the delta between 2016 and ’17. So, we expect to lose about one-and-a-half seconds, that sort of order. It’s a bit difficult to predict the amount of development the teams will put on. But we certainly expect to lose performance.”
Tombazis said that the FIA and Formula 1 are still working on the post-2020 regulations, set to be the next complete overhaul for Formula 1 in terms of car performance, aesthetics, and power units. The aero expert added that changes made for 2019 are merely a “halfway house” for the sport, but have come from the work being done on the future rules.
“There’s work going on at Formula 1 with the collaboration of the FIA for 2021. This work is still ongoing and covers a lot of more complicated areas of the car which need frankly a lot more work before we can define regulations. These regulations for 2019 were an extract of some of the lessons learned already at Formula 1. They obviously had to be implementable for 2019 and therefore they only cover specific areas of the car that are a bit more simple.
“Let’s say this is only a halfway house. I don’t want it to be confused with the work that’s going on for 2021. Obviously they’ll be more extensive and hopefully have much more time for research.”
So, is Formula 1 going in the right direction for racing? Let us know what you think.
