The main aim of the technical regulations for 2022 is to create a slipstream that allows chasing cars to maintain much higher levels of downforce as they approach the rear of other cars compared to the previous generation.
The new aerodynamic rules have been developed by a team under the direction of Brawn and led by aerodynamicist Jason Sommerville , who focused on what was needed to make tailgating other cars easier.
That led to the creation of some very strict points in the new rules, which teams have had to adapt to over the last few months.
However, in theory, aerodynamicists could look for ways to spoil that wake and therefore make it difficult for other cars to overtake them easily.
Brawn is convinced that the teams will not do this intentionally, but admitted that as they find ways to make their cars faster and develop new aerodynamic elements, it could have a negative impact on the great objective of these regulations.
“I think any loss of this ability to closely chase another car will be an accidental consequence of the constant pursuit of performance,” Brawn said when asked about it by Motorsport.com.
“I don’t think any team has set out to purposely damage the wake their car creates so that the other cars can’t follow close behind. There’s not enough time and not enough resources. All you have to do is look for the best lap time. back all the time, so that would never happen in my opinion.”
“As a consequence of chasing the best performance, we may not achieve the 100% target in terms of tracking between the cars. But I think we will still be much better than we were, because the single-seaters before were terrible.
“So if we start 5% worse [than forecast], we’ll still be way ahead of where the old cars were. And then, as we say, we’ll evolve as well.”
Sommerville , who has now moved with his entire team to the FIA, admits that teams may have quite a responsibility in achieving the desired wake. However, she agrees that they are unlikely to harm her.
“We’ve often talked about it, recently we met with one of the top teams and asked them what the wake of their car looked like, as it’s something we’ve been working on for the last four years, understanding it deeply.
“The teams clearly have performance as their priority. But it’s fair to say that so far their work hasn’t eroded the momentum we’re aiming to achieve with the new cars.”
“We know that there could be some kind of problem as they develop the cars, but it seems from the feedback we are getting that the development and performance they are finding is up to everything we had anticipated in terms of quality of wake.”
“What we don’t know yet is how responsive the cars will be to following each other, but I think the indications we have are positive, we are still aligned on our targets and what the teams want.
FIA single-seater director Nikolas Tombazis is confident that teams can focus solely on making their cars as fast as possible.
“Clearly the aerodynamicists are always going to work looking for the best performance for their car compared to their rivals,” he said.
“The way development is done in the wind tunnel and in CFD, and also the fact that the cars are run a lot in the open air, in qualifying and also sometimes in the race, means it’s not effective to design a single-seater to sabotage whoever arrives from behind”.
“They have to make sure their car is as fast as possible and then hope that other teams can’t get close to them.”
“We don’t expect teams to work toward those goals for benevolent reasons alone, but we do believe that the way development happens will keep us within those key principles. There will be some harm, but not massive, we hope.”
