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One might be tempted to think that not much will be changing rule-wise for the 2021 season, given that the 2020 chassis are set be carried over this year, ahead of the arrival of the delayed – and radical – 2022 regulations. But there are some significant changes this year, leading up to the overhaul next year.
Here are the six most notable ones.
Changes to car floors
The most obvious visual change is the cars’ floor shape. In recent years the visible part of the floors, when seen from above, has looked rectangular, with various longitudinal and lateral slots poking out of them. These slots were used by teams to increase the amount of downforce generated near the floor edges and create stronger suction underneath the car, as well as fine-tune the vortex that forms at the floor edge to further improve ground effect.
This year, the regulations state that the whole floor must be solid – while the floors will also feature triangular cutaways at their rear, reducing the downforce-generating surface area on cars.
A new sliding scale for aerodynamic testing
Another new development for 2021 will by the introduction of sliding scale aerodynamic testing regulations – an especially important factor given that this year will see the teams finalising the cars they’ll field when the revolutionary 2022 regulations kick in next year.
Basically, the lower a team finished in the championship table in 2020, the more time they’ll be afforded to hone the aerodynamics of their 2022 car, be that in the wind tunnel or with their Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations.
Mercedes is set to get the least simulation time in 2021, while Williams get the most. Those changes, will be even more pronounced from 2022 onwards, with the championship-winning team getting 45 per cent less time for aero testing than the bottom ranked team.
Clamping on copying
After the furore caused by Racing Point’s RP20-named copy of the Mercedes W10 last year, the FIA has moved to shut down the possibility for teams doing that in the future.
The rules now state that “although it is permissible to be influenced by the design or concept” of a rival team’s car and its individual, exclusive components, any information used to create your own car’s parts “must potentially be available to all competitors” and “only be obtained at events or tests” through the use of standard photography, observation, videos and so on, rather than teams being able to strike deals to have access to another competitor’s tech.
Of course, this didn’t stop Aston Martin inking an agreement with Mercedes to use some of their tech, as part of an increased investment in the British team by the German one.
Additionally, the rules ban “reverse engineering” another competitor’s car – including a ban on the use of 3D cameras to scan other teams’ machinery.
DAS banned
As a result of the outrage last year by the lower-ranked teams like second-placers Red Bull, the Mercedes’ Dual Axis Steering system has been outlawed. The last season saw Lewis Hamilton, Valtteri Bottas and, for a short stint, George Russell able to push and pull their steering wheels to change the front tyre grip, helping with tyre warm-up and cornering.
No more is that the case. Now, the Mercedes steering will have to stick it out like the commoners, while other motorsport leagues borrow the technology in a few years.
New materials permitted
With F1 trying to curb its carbon footprint, the Technical Regulations have been opened up to allow new ‘green’ materials to play a part in the sport – with the FIA giving the greenlight for “flax, hemp, linen, cotton [and] bamboo” to feature in F1.
It is yet to be seen how these will be used and if it will significantly impact the sport’s 256,000-CO2-equivalent-tonne-sized footprint.
Cost cap introduced
The biggest change coming in 2021 is the introduction of Formula 1’s first ever cost cap, set this season at a baseline of $145 million – although it will actually be $147.4m, with teams afforded an extra $1.2m per race in the regulations – while that baseline is set to be reduced to $140m in 2022, and $135m for 2023.
That cap has some notable exceptions: marketing costs, driver salaries and the salaries of the three highest earners in the team aren’t included. Neither are the costs of employees’ maternity, paternity and sick leave, as well as the cost of medical benefits for team personnel and redundancy packages.
Teams are also permitted to run up costs of $45 million relating to ‘capital expenditure’ – for things like purchasing machinery for their factories – between now and the end of 2024.
The cost cap is expected to reduce the financial gap between the largest and smallest teams, making the sport more competitive.
