This post will cover the new regulation changes happening in Formula 1, particularly from a technical standpoint, starting in 2022. Formula 1 will periodically go through regulation changes as the cars and technology evolve - it may be for safety, increasing the speed of the cars, making them more sustainable, and more.
Image taken from Formula 1 website, found here.
Time has come for another regulation change in Formula 1. This time there are both changes in regards to the technical regulations, but also the introduction of cost caps and budgeting within the teams. The ultimate goal is to decrease the gap in performance between teams, and to have much closer on-track racing. Originally intended to be enforced for the 2021 season, they were pushed back by a year due to Covid.
The problem that plagued the Formula 1 cars of recent has been how tricky it is for one car to follow another car closely on circuit. The cars have incredibly complex aerodynamic structures, with the aim of generating downforce, pushing the car into the road surface in order to generate more grip. This has been primarily done through body work elements and wings, where as the car travels through the air, it gets 'pushed' down from the top of the car, but also the shape of the underfloor. Formula 1 cars have been able to generate an incredible amount of downforce, with the cars getting faster and faster in recent years.
The problem with this, is that the aerodynamic disturbance behind the car as it travels through the air. Whilst the air the car travels through is calm and settled, as it pushes through, the aerodynamic elements cause the air behind the car to be incredibly unsettled and turbulent, as shown in the diagram below.
Diagram showing the airflow of a car in the wake of another. Note the turbulent air that the following car has to pass through.
What this means is that the aerodynamic elements of the following car are far less efficient, as the air is not 'smooth'. This can cause a reduction of around 35% of their downforce when approximately three car-lengths behind, and up to 47% when only one car-length behind. This means that it is much trickier for them to stay close to each other through the corners. Alongside this, the following car will be wearing their tyres more aggressively, as it attempts to keep up with the car ahead through the dirty air.
Now sometimes it is of benefit to travel through this dirty air. The turbulent air generated from the car ahead is much thinner. As a result, it is much easier for the following car to gain speed in a straight line, as there is less air resistance pushing back against the car. This is known as traveling in the slip-stream, and is massively beneficial when traveling down straights. However, because of the reasons stated above, this air is an incredible hindrance as soon as you travel through corners.
The next generation of Formula 1 technical regulations attempts to solve this problem - it wants to generate as much downforce as possible, whilst minimising the dirty wake produced by the car as it travels through the air. In order to achieve this, it is exploiting a technical phenomenon known as 'Ground Effect'.
In very simple terms, the floor of the cars will have multiple 'tunnels', that run its length. These tunnels, known as venturis, are designed in such a way as to allow flowing air to expand as it travels along the underside of the car towards the rear. This causes an area of very low pressure, as the speed of the air increases as it expands out of the rear ducts. This region of low pressure is the 'sucking' force that attempts to glue the car to the ground, increasing its downforce and hence grip. Whilst this area of car development has been heavily regulated in recent years, 2022 sees the effect exploited in a more important way.
The new cars want to generate a much larger proportion of its downforce from the underfloor, as opposed to wing and bodywork aerodynamic elements. Alongside this, the front and rear wings are being simplified, and whilst will be used to generate some downforce, it is aimed to be less than previous years. It will also be designed in such a way that the vortices, regions of turbulent air that are generated from the tips of these components, will be projected away from the car following behind. The result of all this, is the following car should retain a much larger proportion of the generated downforce, and hence allow the cars to follow closer. The simplified estimated reduction in downforce for the following cars is predicted to be around 4-18%, which is a massive improvement from previous years.
The tyres are also changing for the upcoming season. Whilst the tyres are only changing slightly in diameter, the rims of the wheels themselves will be much larger, and as a consequence the sidewall of the tyres will be much smaller, as shown below. One reason for the tyre change is to try to make use of technology that is much more relevant to regular road usage. The current Formula 1 tyres have small, 13 inch rims, but large tyres with large sidewalls. This is unlike the majority of tyres used on road cars, and Formula 1 would like to demonstrate how their technological developments are relevant to road cars of the future.
This picture shows a side-by-side comparison of the old and new tyres and rims.
The new tyres are also designed to have a wider temperature operating window, whilst also being more robust and resistant to degradation (check out my post on the basics of racing tyres here). There should be less of a requirement for drivers to 'save' their tyres, and should be pushing the cars more aggressively for longer during race stints, without loosing grip. Not having to manage the tyres in this way should put a larger emphasis on driver skill throughout a full race stint. However, this may start to alter race strategy, as we will be less likely to see races where drivers will have to make a pit stop more than once for a tyre change. This could give the affect of slightly muted excitement towards race strategy, but made up for having the potential for more exciting on-track action.
For the drivers, the combination of the aerodynamic and tyre changes will mean that the cars are perhaps going to be a little harder to drive, and should be a little more 'on edge'. They could feel less planted in the corners due to the new method of generating downforce, and the new tyres are likely to alter how drivers will need to drive to perform at their optimum. We will find out in due course, when the start of the season occurs!
The cars were initially predicted to be anywhere between 3-6 seconds slower than the current generation cars. However, as the teams have developed both the new cars and the models, the rumour is that the cars could be as little as 1 second slower than the current cars at the start of the season, and there are likely to be performance upgrades as the season develops.
As of writing, most teams have announced the dates of the launches for their new cars, starting on the 10th of February with Aston Martin. It will be exciting to see how these new generation of cars look both compared to previous years, and between the teams. In terms of which teams have nailed the new regulation changes and which haven't, time will only tell!
The launch dates taken from the Formula 1 Instagram page, here.
The next blog post is going to cover the use of onboard sensors and data on a race car, in order to both enhance the setup of the vehicle but also improve the performance of the drivers! Feel free to get in contact with me via socials or the contact page if you have any questions!
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