New F1 rules: unavoidable side effects

Exaggeratedly short blanket “The patch is worse than the hole”, “The mountain gave birth to a little mouse”. These are the comments that can be read especially on social media in these hours after the publication by the FIA ​​of the changes to the Formula 1 technical regulations, which will soon be approved by the electronic vote of the World Council. However, it is right to make some more in-depth considerations both on the individual changes and on the general situation. Starting from the latter, the reality is that the room for maneuver that the Federation had to actually be able to change something was very narrow. Beyond the fact of having to get all the various stake holders to agree (a feat in itself), from a technical point of view the situation was and is critical and there were no possible miracles on the horizon. The big bottleneck of car performance in this regulation, conceived in this way, 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 we try to shuffle the cards, with these basic conditions, it is a debt that can only remain unpaid. Given that nothing can be done about the architecture of the system in the short term, the only reasonable attempt remained to move the current imbalance towards a new position, which will always be one of imbalance, but which can be perceived by the public and pilots as more acceptable and less extreme. Be careful though, what we want to underline here is that, as in every balance sheet with a debt position larger than what the coffers can satisfy, every resource that is moved perhaps solves a problem but inevitably creates a new one. Likewise, the proposed changes should alleviate some critical issues but bring with them new ones, perhaps minor, but still to be kept in mind. An excessively short blanket. Checks and balances: the individual changes between pros and cons Let’s try to detail the reason for each change but also its inevitable side effect, starting from the changes proposed for the qualification Lowering the level of recoverable energy from 8 to 7 MJ. The Federation’s idea here is clear: by reducing the maximum recoverable energy, this quantity is brought closer to the amount that pilots can actually recover with braking alone, which means that the practices of lift and coast and super clipping (the latter the real target of the changes) are reduced. In particular for super clipping the Federation states that this change should bring this situation to no more than 2-4 seconds per lap depending on the track. This was certainly a desired change, but it brings with it the most obvious of contraindications: the energy of the electrical part available to the pilots will run out even sooner. The team maps will continue to favor the traction phase (which pays more on the stopwatch) so we will see marked clipping at the end of the straights (even if not as exaggerated as the “super”) and cars that will still seem to have no power on the sprint. It is certainly a better situation from a driving point of view, but with the absolute performance of the car decreasing and therefore the lap times increasing. Super clipping peak power is increased from 250 kW to 350 kW. In practice, in the hateful super clipping phase, part of the combustion engine is used not only to push the car forward but also directly to charge the battery. By increasing the power with which it is possible to do this, the super clipping phase will clearly last less, but the drop in forward thrust of the car will also be even more intense. The combustion engine is not much more powerful than the electric one in this situation of about 50-50 between the two. Therefore, if the electric motor can charge at full power, it means that it uses almost all the power of the thermal engine, and that only that minimum differential, estimated at 70-130 horsepower, will remain to push the single-seater forward for those hypothesized 2-4 seconds. We will have a Formula 1 car launched at 300 km/h in a straight line which however ends up with the forward thrust of little more than a small car. Also in this case the change is understandable, and is aimed at making super clipping a “band-aid” that is quickly torn off with each lap to avoid prolonging the suffering. The number of events where more restrictive energy limits can be applied increases from 8 to 12. After having been partially burned already in Japan, the Federation wants to be able to impose the rules mentioned above but with even more restrictive parameters in over half of the remaining races, looking for 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 collateral effects mentioned above in an even more evident way. Changes for the race. Here the Federation intervenes mainly for safety, with the aim of reducing the risk of repeating situations similar to the Colapinto-Bearman accident seen in Japan. The maximum power available with Boost mode is now limited to 150 kW. Without going into the complications of the regulation, in fact this is once again a limitation on the electrical output which will reduce any sudden accelerations but, obviously, also the general performance available. Overall we struggle to understand the need for the Boost mode given that the Overtake mode already exists, it seems like an unnecessary complication. The MGU-K’s power release is kept at 350 kW in key acceleration zones, but will be limited to 250 kW in other parts of the ride. This is a modification aimed at limiting the power available in sections of travel (like probably the Spoon in Japan where there was the accident between the Haas and the Alpine) but everything appears to be defined in a controversial way, and it will be to understand how the power output will actually be limited in the various sections. A big negative aspect is that the drivers will find themselves in the hands of cars that will have around 135 hp more or less depending on the section of the track. The changes for the start Here the Federation has ventured into some hypotheses which will not be immediately operational but which will be tested starting from Miami and possibly introduced only following a positive outcome of the tests. This appears to be the most controversial part of the entire proposed system. In fact, the idea is to equip the cars with a system capable of identifying a “low power start” with too slow acceleration when the clutch is released and to automatically inject electric power to the wheels to accelerate the car and prevent it from remaining too slow on the grid at great risk of an accident. As much as we recognize its noble intent, the proposal frankly seems to us to be a major stretch, not necessarily effective and with possible very significant secondary effects. Starting from the technical part: if a driver starts badly because he has little energy in the battery (a situation that occurred several 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, however, the bad start is due to an overly exhausted turbo or a clerical error by the driver in releasing the clutch, the automatic injection of power would become an aid at the start, and considering that it would necessarily have to be a weighted increase in power to avoid the rear wheels from spinning, it would become a traction control in all respects, with the risk that the teams optimize the system and that the drivers at that point choose to start in such a way as to have it activated and obtain optimal traction towards the first corner. In short, we understand the enormous risk that is currently present at the start and certainly an intervention by the Federation is desirable, but this particular system leaves us with more than a few doubts. A system of lights and warnings on the cars will also be introduced to warn oncoming cars that the car has started slowly, and this seems more than reasonable to us.
Still on the subject of starts, a reset to the recoverable energy will finally be introduced during the reconnaissance lap to resolve the inconsistencies found in the first races in which the position of the timing line which resets the recoverable energy and that of the start, in front of the grid, are not always aligned, preventing in some situations from being able to use the battery energy at the start. Absolutely, this is a more than necessary modification, but we cannot really understand the need to regulate the recovery and use of the energy of the electrical part even on the reconnaissance lap.
Some minor and fairly obvious changes were then introduced regarding wet conditions, which however we find unnecessary to dwell on at the moment. For every action there is an equal and opposite one. Ultimately we agree with the motivations and spirit of the proposed regulatory changes, but we cannot help but underline how the entire technical system of the regulation offered very narrow margins for manoeuvre, ensuring that, for each intervention, a potentially beneficial but inevitably also a collateral effect was generated.