© Getty Images2022 Rules and RegulationsWith a new season of Formula One almost upon us, we look at some of the bigger changes about to hit the sport.
Nomaneverstepsinthesamerivertwice,saidHeraclitus,quitepossiblyanticipatingFormulaOne’sendlessprocessoftechnicalandsportingreinvention.Changeisalwayswithus,andatthistimeofyearwe’reusuallytryingtofigureouttowhatextentchangesinthenewregulationsaregoingtoaffecttheseasonahead.
This year, change is primarily confined to the technical regulations, with sporting and financial rules remaining largely unaffected. However, those tech changes are… enormous. So, what’s going on in 2022?
Introducing Our 2022 Challenger - The RB18© Getty Images
Unlike most years, when one or two significant aerodynamic changes will occupy months of pre-season speculation, this year, it’d be easier to detail which parts of the aero rules aren’t changing, because there aren’t any.
We’ve been using an evolving but basically coherent set of aerodynamic geometry since 2009. This year, however, we have one of F1’s periodic resets, with the new cars designed from a clean sheet of paper. It’s not uncommon, of course, for everything on a car to be new, but that tends to be new in the sense of variation-on-a-theme; this year, everything is new in philosophy, rather than simply being an optimised version of the thing that went before.
The intention with the fresh start is to make the racing better. The shorthand frequently used is ‘make overtaking easier’. In the strictest sense, that’s not the intention, but rather to allow the cars to get closer together and make overtaking… possible.
The issue with the current (or rather, previous) generation of F1 cars is that their aerodynamic surfaces function best when running in clean air, but they, in turn, generate a very turbulent – or ‘dirty’ – wake, making them difficult, or often impossible, to follow the car in front and, the closer you get, the more your pace advantage dissipates.
The figures F1 have been using for this are a 35% reduction in downforce following at 20m and a 44% loss at 10m. The new rules have been designed to reduce the dirty wake then channel what remains away from the path of a following car; they’ve also been written to reduce the car’s reliance on clean air in the first place. The target with the new regs is to reduce the downforce loss to a 4% drop at 20m and 18% at 10m. The aim is that a following car will lose less ground through a corner, and thus be in a better position to attack on the next straight.
There isn’t any one item that’s affecting this change, rather it’s a whole-car concept, from front wing to rear – with some quite dramatic shapes on both of those items and barge boards banned – but a lot of the work is being done in areas that you can’t see, with a shaped underside replacing the previously flat floor. It isn’t quite a return to the ground effect concept of the early 1980s – there are no sealing skirts – but the sculpted tunnels will replicate the effect.
New Year, New Rules© Getty Images
Every year, the FIA makes the pre-season homologation crash tests harder to pass, and this year is no exception. The front impact test requires the nose of the car to absorb 48% more energy, while the rear crash structure needs to absorb an extra 15%. These aren’t straightforward targets as they might be in other industries because the bar is set very high: nobody passes these with a comfortable margin.
Additionally, this year, analysis of Romain Grosjean’s crash at the 2020 Bahrain Grand Prix has led to some tweaks to the way in which the stressed engine will separate from the rest of the car in the event of a heavy impact, and analysis of Anthoine Hubert fatal F2 accident at Spa in 2019 has led to F1 also improving side-impact protection.
Also very noticeable will be the sport’s new 18-inch wheels and low-profile tyres. This has been in the works for so long it’s almost a surprise that it’s only appearing now, having been tested for four or five years. We’re also getting the return of wheel covers, some standard pressure sensors, and the addition of over-wheel winglets to further condition airflow. There are also new limits on the use of brake ducts to do things other than channel cooling air to the brakes.
Charging On Into A New Season© Getty Images
The test with the 2022 tyres at the end of last season didn’t suggest the new rubber is going to do anything outlandish, but as always with F1 tyres the devil is in the detail. The team will have to work hard to understand how the new profile of the tyre shoulder interacts with the airflow, and what effect the heavier wheel has on suspension set-up.
That suspension is also changing: hydraulics have been banned but also the configuration of the suspension has changed to demand that the suspension arms attach directly to the hub without an offset. There’s also the not-inconsiderable challenge to the pit crew of having to change a bulkier, heavier wheel.
Beefing-up impact structures plus the addition of the bigger wheels has a corresponding impact on car weight, with the minimum rising from 752kg to 790kg this year. The new car is a big unit.
Since the introduction of the hybrid power units in 2014, horsepower has tended to dominate the conversation around F1. With aerodynamics now once again taking centre stage, there’s little to say about the 2022 engines in the regs. We have some new standardised componentry in the fuel system, and an enhanced sensor pack but otherwise the rules for engines are largely unchanged. After homologation, however, we are going to have a development freeze, much like the one that ran between 2007 and 2013.
The other thing to note about our power units for 2022 is that we’re going to have a new fuel standard, with 10 per cent ethanol (E10) in the mix. Long term F1 has set out its ambitions to move to a wholly synthetic fuel – but while that research project continues, it is moving forward with increasing the amount of bio-fuel in the mix.
Red Bull Powertrains To Use Honda Power Unit© Getty Images
We’ve talked a lot about technical changes for 2022 and very little about movement in the Sporting Regulations, simply because the Sporting Regs aren’t really changing. It’s common at this time of year for teams to be running through a raft of modifications to the way they’ll need to operate at the track, but given how much change has been pumped into the technical regulations, the decision was taken late last year to stick with the 2021 regs as much as possible, with several planned changes to the sporting regs thus abandoned.
There will be tweaks here and there, but while F1 gets used to a new style of racing, the operation will continue to be run according to the established sporting rules – with wholesale change to the sporting regs now planned for 2023.
It’s a similar story in the financial regulations, albeit for slightly different reasons. While the cost-cap has been reduced as planned, from $145m to $140m, that figure is based on a benchmark 21-race calendar, with extra races seeing the figure rise incrementally. With a 23-race calendar this year and six sprint events planned, the actual figures are very similar to 2021… but the budget still must stretch a little further to cover the busiest F1 season ever…
