New F1 rules: inevitable side effects

Excessively short blanket

“The cure is worse than the disease”, “The mountain has brought forth a mouse”. These are the comments being read, especially on social media, in these hours after the FIA published the modifications to the Formula 1 technical regulations, which will soon be approved by electronic vote of the World Council. However, it is right to make some more in-depth considerations on both the individual modifications and the general situation. Starting from the latter, the reality is that the Federation’s room for manoeuvre to actually modify something was very narrow. Beyond the fact of having to get all the various stakeholders to agree (an undertaking in itself), from a technical point of view, the situation was and is critical, and no miracles were possible on the horizon. The major bottleneck in car performance under these regulations, conceived as they are, is clearly battery energy. Having removed the MGU-H but increased the electrical power output, the system is perpetually in energy debt, and no matter how much one tries to reshuffle the cards, with these basic conditions, it is a debt that can only remain unpaid. Given that nothing can be done about the system’s architecture in the short term, the only reasonable attempt remained to shift the current imbalance towards a new position, which will always be an imbalance, but one that can be perceived by the public and drivers as more acceptable and less extreme. However, what we want to emphasize here is that, as in any budget with a debt position larger than what the coffers can satisfy, every resource that is moved might solve one problem but necessarily creates a new one. Similarly, the proposed modifications should alleviate some critical issues but bring new ones with them, perhaps minor, but still to be kept in mind. An excessively short blanket.

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Weights and Counterweights: Individual Modifications, Pros and Cons

Let’s detail the reason for each modification, as well as its inevitable side effect, starting with the modifications proposed for the qualification

1. Reduction of recoverable energy level from 8 to 7 MJ. The Federation’s idea here is clear: by reducing the maximum recoverable energy, this quantity approaches the amount that drivers can actually recover with braking alone, which means that lift and coast and super clipping practices (the latter being the true target of the modifications) will be reduced. In particular, for super clipping, the Federation states that this modification should reduce this situation to no more than 2-4 seconds per lap depending on the track. This was certainly a desired modification, but it brings with it the most obvious of contraindications: the electrical energy available to drivers will run out even sooner. Team mappings will continue to prioritize the traction phase (which pays more on the stopwatch), so we will see marked clipping at the end of straights (even if not as exaggerated as “super”) and cars that will still seem to lack power in acceleration. It is certainly a better situation from a driving perspective, but with the car’s absolute performance decreasing and therefore lap times increasing.
2. The peak power of super clipping is increased from 250 kW to 350 kW. In practice, during the undesirable super clipping phase, a part of the internal combustion engine is used not only to propel the car forward but also directly to charge the battery. By increasing the power with which this can be done, the super clipping phase will clearly last less, but the drop in forward thrust will also be even more intense. The internal combustion engine is not much more powerful than the electric one in this roughly 50-50 situation between the two. Therefore, if the electric motor can charge at full power, it means it uses almost all the thermal engine’s power, and to propel the single-seater forward for those hypothesized 2-4 seconds, only that minimal differential, estimated at 70-130 horsepower, will remain. We will have a Formula 1 car launched at 300 km/h on a straight, but then finding itself with the forward thrust of little more than a city car. In this case too, the modification is understandable and aims to make super clipping a “plaster” that is quickly torn off each lap to avoid prolonging the suffering.
3. The number of events where more restrictive energy limits can be applied increases from 8 to 12. After having already been partially burned in Japan, the Federation wants to be able to impose the aforementioned rules but with even more restrictive parameters in over half of the remaining races, in search of weapons to combat anti-spectacle situations such as lift and coast and super clipping. This means that on many tracks we will see the beneficial effects, but also the aforementioned collateral ones, even more clearly.

Modifications for the race.

Here the Federation intervenes primarily for safety, with the aim of reducing the risk of situations similar to the Colapinto-Bearman incident seen in Japan recurring.

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• The maximum power available with Boost mode is now limited to 150 kW. Without delving into the complication of the regulations, this is once again a limitation on electrical output that will reduce any sudden accelerations but, obviously, also the overall available performance. Overall, we struggle to understand the necessity of the Boost mode given that Overtake already exists; it appears as an unnecessary complication.
• The MGU-K power release is maintained at 350 kW in key acceleration zones, but will be limited to 250 kW in other parts of the lap. This is a modification aimed at limiting the power available in cornering sections (such as probably Spoon in Japan where the incident between the Haas and the Alpine occurred), but the whole thing appears controversially defined, and it will be necessary to understand how the power output will actually be limited in the various sections. A major negative aspect is that drivers will find themselves with cars that will have approximately 135 hp more or less depending on the section of the track.

Modifications for the start

Here the Federation has ventured into some hypotheses that will not be immediately operative but will be tested starting from Miami and eventually introduced only after a positive test outcome. This appears to be the most controversial part of the entire proposed system. The idea is to equip cars with a system capable of identifying a “low power start” with too slow acceleration upon clutch release and automatically injecting electrical power to the wheels to accelerate the car and prevent it from remaining too slow on the grid, posing a high risk of accident. While we recognize the noble intent, the proposal frankly seems like a significant overreach, not necessarily effective, and with potentially very relevant secondary effects. Starting from the technical side: if a driver starts poorly because they have low battery energy (a situation that has occurred multiple times in the first three races), we don’t see how the electrical part can come to the rescue, given that there is no energy available anyway. If, on the other hand, the bad start is due to an overly depleted turbo or a material error by the driver in releasing the clutch, the automatic power injection would become a starting aid, and considering that it would necessarily be a weighted increase in power to prevent rear wheel spin, it would become a traction control in all respects, with the risk that teams optimize the system and drivers at that point choose to start in such a way as to activate it and obtain optimal traction towards the first corner. In short, we understand the enormous risk present at the start currently, and Federation intervention is certainly desirable, but this particular system leaves us with more than a few perplexities. A system of lights and warnings on the cars will also be introduced to signal slowly starting single-seaters to approaching cars, and this, on the other hand, seems more than reasonable.
Still on the topic of starts, a reset of recoverable energy during the reconnaissance lap will finally be introduced to fix the inconsistencies found in the first races where the position of the timing line that resets recoverable energy and that of the start, in front of the grid, are not always aligned, preventing the use of battery energy at the start in some situations. Overall, this is a more than necessary modification, but we truly cannot understand the need to regulate the recovery and use of electrical energy even during the reconnaissance lap.
Some minor and fairly obvious modifications have also been introduced regarding wet conditions, which we currently find superfluous to dwell on.

To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction

Ultimately, we share the motivations and spirit of the proposed regulatory changes, but we cannot help but emphasize how the entire technical framework of the regulations offered very narrow margins for maneuver, ensuring that for every intervention, a potentially beneficial effect was generated, but inevitably also a collateral one.

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