After a year of delay, Formula 1 will welcome long-awaited new technical rules, which will bring about a drastic aerodynamic change to benefit track fighting and overtaking.
While the Grand Circus hopes the reduction in dirty air will make racing more interesting and competitive, some fear the nature of a new rules cycle will alienate teams during the first two seasons.
McLaren technical director James Key has acknowledged there will be a huge development curve in 2022 until teams get to grips with the new aerodynamic package, and believes it may take up to a full year before the outfits get really close to each other. .
“I think the rates of development are probably going to be very high,” Key explained when asked by Motorsport.com if he expects the teams to quickly converge on performance.
“I think that with these rules everything will be equalized faster compared to what we have now, simply because there are many different things to do in our car, there is always a different solution and a new path to follow,” revealed the team’s technician of Woking.
“I think it will be a little bit quicker in 2022 to start bringing the teams together, although it won’t necessarily be this year, maybe it will be in 2023,” he said. “But I think there is still a lot to learn, everyone has to do it with the 2022 cars, we have to correlate the data on the track and see what we have all done.
“There could be real changes when you see the cars of the rest. We have to check how you perform against the others and find out the strengths and weaknesses, and in that sense, we are all the same.
“That’s going to cause a lot of jumps in development and ideas as we go through the first half of the year. Then that’s going to come down to the parts on each car,” Key said.
“I suspect things for 2023 will be similar, because the teams will have identified some trends, and that means the cars will be more alike. If that is the case, it’s early to say, but the teams will have a better approach for the 2023 cars. than for those of 2022”.
Although the new regulations give teams fewer chances to play with aerodynamics, the McLaren technical director acknowledges that teams will continue to innovate with the cars to find gains in time. However, this is a “more subtle and delicate” process.
“Technically, we have fewer tools to play with, but that brings up a lot of ideas that wouldn’t even have come up with previous cars,” said the Briton. “Even though it’s less efficient, you tend to look at areas where you can gain more performance, because you have more restrictions on the aerodynamics, including the suspension, which has been simplified a lot from what we’re used to.
“The truth is that at times like this there is a lot of innovation. In 2009, when the aerodynamicists came to the office saying that it was no longer the same, and then everyone realized that there were many things to do, only that it was more complicated It’s that kind of situation in 2022.”
“I think we will see some differences, some different cars. It will be interesting to see what people have done,” concluded Key.
