Formula 1 bosses are under no illusions that the new 2022 rules are going to be perfect, and the FIA admits there are some things they could have done better.
However, there remains a strong belief that when the new F1 cars go out to compete in the season-opening Bahrain GP, the new rules will achieve the goal of allowing racing to be better and more exciting.
And, while it is inevitable that some details will have to be adjusted in the short term if they go wrong, there is a certain degree of confidence that F1 will not repeat the scenario of 2009, when the new rules aimed at helping overtaking did not hit the mark. .
What went wrong in Formula 1 2009?
The last time F1 rewrote the rules to try to improve racing and generate more overtaking was in 2009.
While much of the changes made by the Overtaking Working Group (OWG) helped improve things, there were also some very important unintended consequences that saw their efforts quickly undone by the teams.
Detail view of the double diffuser of the Brawn BGP 001 2009
The 2009 season is remembered for the story of the phoenix that Brawn GP became, taking full advantage of those unintended consequences of the new rules.
Along with Williams and Toyota, the renowned team (which was born from the ashes of Honda ) came to pre-season testing with a double deck diffuser (a double diffuser).
Delving deeper into the wording and intent of the rules, the rest of the grid was up in arms and demanded that the design be banned. But the FIA gave the go-ahead and everyone else was forced to follow suit.
2009 Ferrari F60 (660) front view comparison to F2008
The premise of the 2009 rules was to reduce all the ancillary aerodynamic devices that had grown up around cars in the previous era.
They also looked to change the philosophy of the front and rear wings, with a taller and narrower rear wing set up to deal with the wake generated in a slightly different way. That was expected to help the cars track each other better.
With the front wing, the FIA not only made the wing wider so it would interact with the front wheel and its wake differently, but added control over a neutral center section.
The intention was that this 500mm area would prevent teams from using the central part of the front wing to generate downforce as they had done in the past.
However, that movement indirectly created a breeding ground for what was commonly known as the Y250 vortex . That became an incredibly powerful tool that the teams harnessed to power downstream flow structures and improve the overall performance of the car.
But it did help make Formula 1 cars even more sensitive to forward-going turbulence, as any disturbance meant the Y250’s flows didn’t work as well as they did in clear air.
The 2009 rules also allowed teams to use a driver-adjustable front wing device that teams had spent resources developing but which quickly became redundant. It was replaced in 2011 with the DRS rear spoiler which is still in use today.
The vast majority of teams hid the mechanism needed to operate the front wing adjustability within their endplate , but that meant they couldn’t have a higher level of complexity when it came to precisely the endplate design.
2009 McLaren MP4-24 Front Wing Adjuster
If we compare the McLaren MP4-24 (above) with the Brawn GP BGP001 front wing (below), we can see that the adjuster is housed on the inboard end of the flap, giving them more flexibility in terms of their endplate design and therefore, a greater opportunity to create the outwash effect.
Brawn BGP 001 front wing for Spa 2009
The Overtaking Task Force had also originally expressed an interest in removing the bargeboards from the car, as it was obvious how much downforce they possessed. However, the teams pushed for them to stay and got away with it.
Bargeboards del McLaren MP4-24 2009
F1 has gotten ahead of the problems it had in 2009 by making the 2022 rules
The work done on the 2022 rules builds on the foundations of the changes made in 2009.
But (and here’s the answer to the article title), while those rules weren’t prescriptive enough and had a similar format to the old ones, these new ones were written from scratch.
That, coupled with a tighter understanding of certain aspects of the design that will now be the same across the board, should increase your chances of success.
But the truth about how much teams have evaded original intent in the pursuit of performance won’t be known for some time.
Nikolas Tombazis , the FIA’s head of single-seater affairs, is confident that enough time and effort has been put into drawing up the rules to ensure that teams don’t end up side-stepping and throwing away the positive intent that prompted the revision of the regulations. .
The 2022 car according to F1 itself
Asked about the possibility of a repeat of 2009, Tombazis was confident things will be better this time.
“There are two or three things that, in hindsight, we would have done a little bit differently, but I won’t say what they are,” he said of the current framework.
“But in the 2009 work, fundamentally, there was clearly a lot less detail involved, but the key things learned during that work were correct. They thought it through pretty well, how to understand what the phenomenon was [that prevented cars from following each other]. ] and what should be done”.
“But where it failed was later, the rules were filled with so many freedoms that after a few weeks of wind tunnel testing, and obviously I was sitting on the other side [working for a team], we had completely covered all the good things that had been thought”.
“The rules were written in such a way that, if you wanted, you could make a car that was easy to follow, but was quite slow. Or you could make a fast Formula 1 car that would completely ignore all that racing-enhancing stuff.”
“We’ve tried to learn from that and make rules that are inevitably more restrictive, but hopefully, where there’s not as much divergence.”
“But I’m sure there will be areas where we conclude that we may have made a mistake or need to make some adjustments.”
Group photo of the 2021 F1 drivers with the prototype for 2022
