Last Updated on November 29 2023, 10:35 am

Senior figures at the FIA have been left bemused by the regulation change they made for F1 car design going into 2023. Whilst the new rules were a marginal change from the ‘biggest in living memory’ we saw in 2022 they clearly had a significant affect on the performance of the cars during the season.

This had little to do with Red Bull winning 21 of the 22 races in the year and four midfield teams were all second quickest to the world champions at various points in the season.

 

 

F1 cars a bit slow in 2023

Aston Martin made a huge leap at the start of 2023 from their lowly P7 the previous year and over the first eight races scored two second place podiums together with four P3’s at the chequered flag.

McLaren took up the baton in Austria and they were then more often than not second quickest to Red Bull but their poor haul of just 17 points in the first eight races meant they left themselves too much to do to catch Ferrari or Mercedes.

The FIA official who runs the day to day affairs of Formula One now reveals his surprise at the lack of performance increase the teams found across the year. With in season development traditionally seeing the cars progress to between 1-2 seconds in pace when compared to the previous year, 2023 was something of a damp squib.

“I was expecting we were going to be a bit faster,” claimed the FIA’s Nikolas Tombazis now reveals.

“How much, I couldn’t say because obviously we changed a bit the floor regulations.”

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Lap times improve less on previous year

Following the whoo haa particularly from Mercedes over the dangers of life and limb to the drivers due to extreme porpoisin, the FIA was forced to intervene as Toto Wolff couched the issue in terms of a health and safety concern.

The 2023 floor edges were raised to prevent the complete sealing of the airflow underneath, which meat the cars bounced less but were unable to extract the full potential of the low pressure effect of downforce achieved under neath the cars,

Under the new ground force design philosophy, the cars create more downforce the lower they run to the ground.

Verstappen recorded a pole time in Bahrain 2023 0.85s quicker than the time set a year earlier by Charles Leclerc. This was not unusual as these kinds of performance gains can be made during the winter break in F1.

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Yet by the time the teams reached Abu Dhabi some 21 races later, Max could only deliver a pole time which was 0.379s quicker than the one he recorded there the previous year. Clearly by altering the regulations for 2023, the FIA stemmed the ability of the teams to build cars much quicker than in the previous year.

The end result was that the teams found ways of running their cars without the extreme bouncing from 2022 and it is questionable whether being bounced into making the rule changes, the FIA did not make a big mistake.

As the season developed it was clear the Red Bull philosophy for their RB19 was not to produce a car quickest over one lap, but one that could run the Grand Prix distance in the least amount of time.

Their focus was on tyre wear and through the course of the season the incremental degradation suffered by the rest of the field left Red Bull in prime position to run the optimum tyre strategy from the form the lead of the race.

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Verstappen just 12 pole positions

The evidence for this was that Max claimed just 12 pole positions despite hime delivering the most dominant year ever produced by a Formula One driver.

Ferrari developed a car which regularly challenged for top spot win Saturday and Charles Leclerc recorded five pole positions though non were converted into a race win.

Sergio Perez and Carlos Sainz each we’re quickest in qualifying twice and Lewis Hamilton gave Mercedes their only pole position at the Hungarian Grand Prix.

One problem the FIA appears impotent to resolve is the weight of the. Modern formula One cars which of course affect their overall lap time, particularly when accelerating out of the slow corners.

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F1 cars remain too heavy

This was targeted by the FIA to be resolved with the new generation of F1 cars coming in 2026, but the latest thoughts on the new regulations is that the cars in three years time may manage to reduce their bulk but by only 25-30kg.

Much of this because the electrical power is being increased to 50% of the total output of the new power units and of course the density of a battery significantly outweighs most other components on an F1 car.

Liberty Media are hoping the racing will be closer next year given their has been a drop in eyeballs watching F1 due to the predictability of a Red Bull and Max Verstappen win.

Formula One has come under some pressure to change its rules in an attempt to stop red Bull being the runaway winners again in 2024, but Stefano Domenicali refuses to continuance this and believes the competition will be closer next season regardless. 

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Budget cap not preventing ‘catch-up’

“With regard to the sporting side of it, I would say congratulations to Max,” Domenicali said. “It was something impressive in terms of maturity in terms of standards, to Red Bull.

“I’m sure that that’s the aim of all the teams, to try to show the level of their engineering, the level of their capacity and capability to improve.”

“As always I’m a guy that doesn’t like to speak because there’s always a lot of people who are speaking and then have been contradicted,” counselled F1’s supremo.

Formula One introduced a budget cap to prevent teams like Mercedes and ferrari simply buying lap time by spending many multiples of millions more than the rest of the teams.

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Domenicali looks to new regulations

However, some have argued this is now a handicap for the pack chasing down the runaway leaders.

“To the critics that will say with a budget cap you cannot develop the car, I would say McLaren proves that is not right,” Domenicali countered.

With the next major rules overhaul coming in 2026, Domenicali does not seem perturbed.

“There are two years that are really crucial because then we’re going to have a change, maybe related to the new balance of the power unit and so on,” he argued.

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New power units – spend restricted

When the power units were last changed now ten years ago, Mercedes were believed to have spent over $1bn in research and development and delivered by far the most powerful engine.

This carried them through much of their eight years of dominance as now their aerodynamic skills have clearly been called into question. The new power units will be capital spend restricted so one team should not be capable of doing what Mercedes did prior to the V6 turbo hybrid era.

One result of the budget cap and power unit convergence has seen Saturday’s one lap shootouts more exiting than ever before as Domenicali observed of Q1 in Abu Dhabi.

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F1 Qualifying now closer than ever 

“You saw qualifying, 20 cars in less than one second. So in qualifying we are very, very close.

“Of course race pace is different, and I think that these will be the major things that we’re going to see different next year.”

Mercedes have it all to do as they have persisted with a car design philosophy which is clearly not capable of catching Red Bull and so unlike the other teams who have all shifted their designs over the past two years, Toto Wolff revealed that “every competent” will be different on the 2024 challenger from Brackley.

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