2021 F1 changes

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AMuS

• Engines should ideally be within a defined performance window. How to get there is still under discussions

• "Performance safety net" still under discussions possibly through fuel flow.

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This stinks to BOP. I´m afraid it won´t end well.

 

The obsession in equalising teams and cars' performances won't do any good to F1.

 

Maybe this is related to that rumour about Ferrari changing the whole engine for 2022. They know that power will be irrelevant so the only way of making a difference with the engine is with better packaging.

 

https://www.autosport.com/f1/feature/11020/the-potential-pitfalls-mercedes-is-working-to-counter-in-2021

The potential pitfalls Mercedes is working to counter in 2021

The design rules revolution that was supposed to be introduced now is, of course, postponed until 2022. But that doesn't mean preparations for the 2021 season are the same for everyone. McLaren has switched engine suppliers to return to being a Mercedes customer. It has therefore had to significantly adapt its chassis to fit its new engine, with team production director Piers Thynne saying the process means McLaren will enter the new season with "essentially a new car".

All the teams are also now operating under F1's cost cap, which stands at $145million for 2021. Some squads, such as Williams, were already operating under that ceiling, so have not had to alter their approaches, or indeed are considering plans to spend upwards towards the cap. But the bigger teams have had to make significant operations changes to comply.

Factoring that sustained success - and, of course, not forgetting that 2021 follows a year where at times its car design achieved performance gaps to the rest of the field that have not been witnessed since the earliest years of the current engine formula - alongside the carryover requirement inevitably makes Mercedes the favourite once again.

"At this time of year we are just full of the anxiety and excitement of waiting to find out whether all this investment that we have made into the new car will indeed pay off" James Allison
And this why it was so striking to hear Mercedes technical director James Allison recently say: "If you are looking at this new season of 2021 and you are thinking it's just going to be a carryover of what we saw in 2020, well, don't be fooled by anyone who is telling you that."

"The work we've had to do has been very wide-reaching," Allison said in a video, released by Mercedes, explaining the scope of the 2021 rule changes. "And we hope we have done enough to stay successful. But as ever at this time of year we are just full of the anxiety and excitement of waiting to find out whether all this investment that we have made into the new car will indeed pay off."

Since it reached its current position as F1's all-conquering team, Mercedes has not made the cliched mistake of resting on its laurels. And, despite the impressive performance levels the W11 produced, the team did look vulnerable on several occasions last season, which cost it points.

There are potential pitfalls that all F1 teams must consider for 2021, and Mercedes has already publicly acknowledged the challenges it faces. Here we examine exactly what the team is worried about, and how likely it is that such stumbling blocks could bring down F1's current giant.

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Will the floor aero rule changes be a significant factor?
"Probably the most intense and difficult thing for us is reacting to the aerodynamic changes that come for 2021," says Allison, firmly cutting to the heart of the matter.

Plans to change the floor designs were made in reaction to the awesome speeds reached by the 2020 cars. Although the current aero rules package has been in place since 2017, chassis and engine evolution, allied to the stable tyre compounds in 2019 and 2020, meant that the cars were reaching speeds and lap times that had not been achieved for many years. But with higher speeds came problems.

The FIA has a long history of stepping in when F1 cars reach an ultra-high performance level. That's for very good reasons, as modern tracks are graded via their safety status, and it's easier to rein in the cars than rebuild every circuit. It was for this reason that 2004 held on for so long as F1's lap-time high-water mark, because the rule that required drivers to run a single set of tyres for an entire race in 2005 was introduced in a bid to curb cornering speeds.

When this was removed a year later, the V10 engines had been replaced by V8s and, three years further on, the design rules were altered drastically to slash downforce levels, creating the criss-crossed slope that has led F1 to its current speed point.

After tyre failures rocked the British GP, as well as additional puncture problems at Mugello and Imola, the FIA stepped in. The decision was made with F1 to enforce alterations to the floors, as well as introduce reinforced tyre compounds for 2021.

The floor changes essentially scale back the intricate designs that had become prevalent in this area, with a triangular exclusion zone added here, where no bodywork can be placed between the back of the driver cell and a car's rear axle. The outlawed slots and perforated edges had a knock-on effect in helping diffusers (which have also been trimmed by 50mm for 2021 in a concurrent required change) generate downforce, because they prevented distorted air getting in.

Judging by the designs trialled by Ferrari, Renault and Haas late in 2020, small tapering curls could be introduced to try to replicate what the various slots and cut-outs were previously doing.



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"When you see it, you'll think, 'That doesn't look that big', but on its own in its rawest form if you just chop that area off your car it'll take about a second a lap away," Allison explains, regarding the triangular area of floor restriction.

There have been additional small rule changes regarding aero-generating parts that are more along the lines of what has been cut from the diffuser, as what Allison describes as "the little fins and flicks that were on the rear brake duct" must be smaller.

The toothy strakes applied to the bargeboards further towards the front of the car are also now banned. But it remains possible for the teams to make considerable changes to nose bodywork and associated fairings without needing to spend their critical development tokens.

The W11, on which the W12 will be mostly based, was without doubt the class of 2020 and can be considered the best F1 car Mercedes has ever produced
"The combination of those four effects [floor triangle, diffuser cut, brake ducts fin reduction and bargeboard alteration] in their rawest form - just cut-off and trimmed back in a way that the rules require - brings the performance of the car way back to sort of somewhere near 2019 levels," says Allison.

The challenge to recover the downforce loss is one of arguably the two biggest potential stumbling blocks that Mercedes (and everyone else) is navigating ahead of the 2021 season. Any team that can claw back the approximately one-second deficit, or 10% overall downforce loss, by developing the few areas of the cars that remain unrestricted by the token system will have an enormous advantage.

Mercedes remains in a very strong position approaching this design obstacle. For a start, the W11, on which the W12 will be mostly based, was without doubt the class of 2020 and can be considered the best F1 car Mercedes has ever produced. This is mainly because the team found a way to make such massive gains despite the rules remaining stable going into 2020.


The main thrust of those stems from the good job Mercedes has done with its chassis designs as the turbo-hybrid era has progressed - it has been the case for several seasons (mainly since it traversed the 2017 rule changes so well) that the team's power prowess is not just the sole factor behind its success.

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Will the new tyres remove old advantages?
As part of Autosport's 70th anniversary special edition, Mercedes chief designer John Owen said: "Most of the vices that we've ever had [in terms of car design] are about tyres." And it's worth revisiting this comment once again in the context of the new rubber being introduced for 2021.

The teams got to sample the new compounds Pirelli is producing - the first new tyres since 2019, after the teams rejected the ones that had been set for use last year - at the Portuguese, Bahrain and Abu Dhabi grands prix.

They are around 3kg heavier to incorporate the additional strength the rubber design now requires to cope with the higher speeds, although this is building on an existing approach rather than being all-new. Last year Lewis Hamilton estimated the new tyres would perform "like a second worse per lap".

It has long been recognised that the world champion holds a distinct advantage when it comes to in-race tyre management over his rivals, particularly team-mate Valtteri Bottas. This perhaps explains his initial pessimism regarding what were then prototype tyres, although his negative assessments were shared by many others, as it would be natural for Hamilton to seek to protect that advantage. After all, the negative driver feedback played a major part in the 2020 tyres being abandoned.

But it's the danger the tyre change represents for Mercedes overall that is the second of the two potentially most cumbersome stumbling blocks. And this is why we again refer back to Owen's point: failing to make the tyres work best is simply one of the biggest mistakes a modern F1 team can make.


Mercedes even has a loud warning from the most recent F1 event - that defeat to Max Verstappen in Abu Dhabi, where a problem getting the best out of the soft tyres cost Mercedes in qualifying at a venue where track position is so crucial.

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"These tyres will affect the way that the car performs and they affect the way that you have to design the aerodynamic platform and the way that you have to set up the car," says Allison.

"So it's been a big challenge for us to try and stretch out that testing data that we had at the tracks last year and to try and make as much as we can out of the tyre data supplied to us by Pirelli, so that we would be ready to really optimise the car around the characteristics of these new tyres."

During FP2 at the 2020 Bahrain GP, the team ran the prototype tyres for longer than any of its rivals, as it sacrificed its usual race preparation programme to gain additional understanding about the new rubber
Just as with the challenge to overcome the downforce loss, nailing the understanding of new Pirelli tyres is not a task to be underestimated. But, although its risk of messing up critical calculations is as high as other teams' - see its shocking underperformance in the early parts of the 2020 Turkish GP - Mercedes does have a major advantage it can rely upon here.

During FP2 at the 2020 Bahrain GP, the team ran the prototype tyres for longer than any of its rivals, as it sacrificed its usual race preparation programme to gain additional understanding about the new rubber. Again, this emphasises how big an advantage Mercedes still had at the end of last year, with the opening Bahrain race being eight rounds since the W11's last performance upgrades were added.

Mercedes also completed additional running that other teams did not in second practice in Abu Dhabi. In short, the team managed to make an early start on the critical work to make sure it nails the switch to new, stronger rubber.

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Could smaller new challenges combine into a major obstacle?
Although the floor-design tweaks and the new tyres are the headline (of limited) changes for the 2021 cars, there are a few other areas where things will be different to 2020, even with the carryover requirements.

The first is that Mercedes' innovative dual-axis steering system has been banned, with the team's agreement, and will not feature on the W12. Mercedes even removed DAS from its cars during Friday practice at several of the late 2020 races, as it focused on preparing for life without it in 2021. When George Russell replaced Hamilton for the Sakhir GP, DAS was left on to allow the younger Briton the chance to get familiar with what Allison calls "an old friend".

Engine manufacturers are now only permitted to make one performance upgrade in 2021, which "really ramps up the pressure on the PU organisation to make sure that we get as much as possible from that single opportunity", says Allison.

Again, Mercedes has strong past form to call upon in this particular area, but it should be noted that Ferrari has overhauled its engine after its 2020 disaster, and Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff expects that "Honda will really step on the gas to compete for the championship in their last year as a manufacturer" with Red Bull.

Plus, the car minimum weight has been raised by 6kg compared to 2020 and now sits at 752kg. The heavier new tyres account for some of this, while the minimum weight of the power unit has also been raised by 5kg to 150kg, with some suggestions that this was in response to teams trying to find small, but expensive, weight gains by using innovative materials.

Mercedes, alongside the rest of the teams, has also had to work hard to ensure it is now in line with F1's new cost-cap regulations. In theory, this would be expected to have a minimal impact on car performance for 2021 given the carryover requirements, and because the cost cap only applied from 1 January this year, long after the teams started planning the adaptations of their 2020 cars.

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But it's a critically important rule, and Mercedes, as one of F1's largest teams, has had to alter the way it deploys its staff to stay within the confines of the cost cap, which includes using its personnel in its recently created Applied Science division and considering entering additional motorsport categories in the future.

The team does not want to lose the staff that have created its stunning success. "That has been a huge body of work that has kept us really on our toes for a long, long time," says Allison.

Allison suggests Mercedes is viewing the clampdown on resources as a further chance to improve, by making it so that "the methodology and approach to those CFD calculations [and windtunnel work] are as valuable as possible"
The cost cap runs alongside F1's first handicap system for aero development, which, as the 2020 winner, impacts Mercedes most. For the first half of 2021 - there is a reset based on the constructors' championship order after 30 June - Mercedes is permitted to use 90% of the 2020 windtunnel allowance, while Williams can go up to 112.5% after finishing 10th last year. CFD tool usage, already heavily governed, is now restricted in a similar way.

For the same reasons as the cost cap, the impact this new rule could have on the 2021 competitive order should be minimal. But the sliding handicap scale alters rather dramatically from the start of next year, with the 2021 winner down to 70% windtunnel allowance and the squad finishing last up to 115%.

Allison suggests Mercedes is viewing the clampdown on resources as a further chance to improve, by making it so that "the methodology and approach to those CFD calculations [and windtunnel work] are as valuable as possible".

"We've tried to adapt our approach to this," he adds. "So, we mitigate and maybe even completely offset the effect of this reduction in the amount that we are allowed to use these fundamental tools."

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Will the switch of focus to the 2022 rules reset impact Mercedes' 2021 chances?
The delayed major rules reset will be an important factor in how the teams approach their 2021 development campaigns. The carryover requirements make things easier but, given the remaining unrestricted aero development areas and the allowances within the token system, there are still gains to be found heading into 2021 and during the season's opening stages.

There will come a point, as is the case in every normal season, when resource allocation shifts towards the new design, and the 2022 cars are set to be so vastly different with their venturi tunnels and slashed overall downforce that it will be a key focus for every team. Even at the back of the grid, Williams is committed to continuing development for its 2021 machine, but wary that it must already plan backwards from the expected initial test dates in 2022 to make sure it does not miss any track running with the all-new chassis concepts.

The cost cap is an additional consideration in this area, because the decision to push the introduction of the new cars back means that much of the design development must now be done within 2021's limit. Had the new cars been brought through for this year, the teams would have had unrestricted budgets to design them alongside developing their 2020 challengers.

In theory, again, the cost cap limits the possibilities of bigger teams such as Mercedes gaining a significant advantage. That's really for this time next year, but it should be noted that the teams were not allowed to start aero testing their 2022 designs until 1 January 2021.

The danger for any team now is that it spends too much time and resources upon 2021, and not looking enough at the rules reset. This hurt McLaren and Ferrari as they fought for the 2008 championship with the 2009 reset looming. The team that gained most - Brawn GP from Honda's ashes - is of course now all-conquering Mercedes. Plus, the carryover requirements and token development restrictions act as natural limits to how much the teams can focus on 2021 in any case.

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Could driver line-up uncertainty destabilise Mercedes?
Here we enter the realm of speculation, but it is worthy of consideration for one key reason: the Red Bull/Verstappen combination. On several occasions in 2020, Mercedes was hamstrung by Verstappen clinging to the front of races it was dominating, while the rest of the pack fell far behind. This serves to highlight what is at stake for Mercedes if it was to drop the ball towards Red Bull. Wolff also says that "Red Bull, with [Alex Albon replaced by Sergio] Perez, will be a much stronger opponent in terms of the constructors' championship".

The potential distraction that talks about another contract extension could create represents exactly the same circumstances that tracked Hamilton last season
On Monday it was announced that Hamilton had signed a fresh, one-year contract with the team for which he has raced since 2013. This ended plenty of wild theories regarding his immediate future, but the length of the new deal still stood out. Effectively, what Mercedes and Hamilton have done is agreed to kick talks about a longer-term deal down the road.

Given the state of the world right now (and as was proved in 2020), alternative line-ups for unexpected reasons must be acknowledged as a consideration for Mercedes. It always remains possible that an unfortunate and shocking outside incident could prevent Hamilton's return even now his new deal is announced. But the potential distraction that talks about another contract extension could create represents exactly the same circumstances that tracked him last season.

So, there are real (if slim) risks that the driver line-up harmony that Mercedes has worked so hard to preserve since Nico Rosberg's departure could be jeopardised. If that unlikely scenario were to happen, expect Verstappen to pounce on any resulting weakness.

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Why is Mercedes raising the risks to its dominance so publicly?
Mercedes' regularly repeated mantras are that after every win it resets to focus on the next race, and that it learns most from its defeats. There is a relentless focus on self-improvement and fostering team spirit. Its 'no-blame' culture is rightly lauded in the context of the staggering success it has achieved, and how a lack of this approach has cost other teams in F1's history.

Mercedes is also one of the most open and inviting teams in the F1 paddock, which explains why it produced Allison's video. It's simply a part of the winning formula - being open gives it further chances to learn when things go wrong.

By pointing out the potential pitfalls it faces even after yet another year of dominance, Mercedes manages to further cement its strong foundations. While it will be galling to some to hear talk of 'challenges' that will almost inevitably be overcome by what is a superb organisation, this diminishes the respect due to F1's greatest current team.

While its complex culture cannot be copied like a car development design, the lessons Mercedes provides with its attitude and approach should not be dismissed lightly.

 

+100

 

Mercedes admits it is battling some "issues" with its engine preparations for the new Formula 1 season, but is confident it can have fixes in place for the first race.

The German manufacturer is chasing an eighth consecutive F1 title double this season, having been undefeated during the turbo-hybrid era.

But, as it ramps up work for the start of the 2021 campaign, its engine chief Hywel Thomas has revealed that it is facing some early year challenges.

"We have got some issues with the power units," he said in a video released by Mercedes.

"We know we have issues but we have plenty of plans in place to fix all of those issues.

"I'm sure it will all be ready for the first race."

Mercedes is no stranger to facing dramas in the pre-season build-up, and 12 months ago its then engine chief Andy Cowell admitted that the team was facing troubles in its preparations for the new campaign.

While the team endured some reliability dramas in testing, it was eventually able to get on top of the matter by the time the delayed season started in July.

https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/155017/mercedes-battling-issues-with-engine-preparations

 

Would at least show who is the best driver


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Didn't they play that card in 2020 and 2019 ?

"We are having issues with the engine" so you guys can take a breather and we will see you next year after another pair of championships.

 

Giovinazzi saying Alfa will have changes at the front—slim nose is the obvious expectation—and hoped-for improvements to the PU. Car will be presented on the 22nd in Poland.

Unless you speak Italian you won’t understand much but still worth watching

https://video.sky.it/sport/formula1/video/f1-giovinazzi-alfa-romeo-intervista-649073

 

if they 'played a card' thats ok. If the problems were real and fixed, then I see no issue. Playing cards is part of F1.

 

https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/155097/key-f1-teams-will-recover-lost-downforce-in-2021

Formula 1 teams should be close to recovering all the downforce lost with new aero rules in the early stages of the 2021 season, reckons McLaren technical director James Key.

In a bid to slow cars for this year, and to help put less stress through the tyres, the FIA has introduced a raft of technical changes.

The most obvious is a cut back of the floor area ahead of the rear tyres, but tweaks have also been made to the regulations surrounding brake duct designs and diffusers.

The aim was to reduce downforce by 10% overall, with Mercedes revealing recently that its initial work showed the cut back had taken performance down to 2019 levels.

But, as progress has been made by teams over the winter, Key believes that chunks of the missing downforce have been clawed back by working on the design areas that are still available.

He believes that, by the early stages of the campaign, most teams will be back to the downforce levels they had in 2020.

"It's had the effect of halting the rapid progress that's been going on now with these cars for a long time, and we kind of needed to do that for an extra year of these regs," explained Key about the new rules.

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Interesting look at F1 car inspections this year -- https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/why-the-fia-has-got-tough-on-f1-car-inspections/6114308/

Why the FIA has got tough on F1 car inspections - Formula 1 / Analysis
By: Adam Cooper
Apr 6, 2021, 11:06 AM
At the Bahrain GP the FIA's technical department introduced a new weapon in its ongoing fight to police the increasingly complex Formula 1 technical regulations.
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After every race this season, the FIA will select a finishing car at random and subject it to a deeper level of checks and analysis than is usually the case, focusing on particular areas.

Teams are trusted to show up with cars that are fully legal, and indeed the F1 sporting regulations note that "competitors must ensure that their cars comply with the conditions of eligibility and safety throughout each practice session and the race," and that "the presentation of a car for initial scrutineering will be deemed an implicit statement of conformity."

Cars are not examined in detail every weekend. For example, after the race in Bahrain all finishing cars were weighed, and all underwent a series of tests of parameters related to how their power units were operated during the race.

However, only the Red Bull of Sergio Perez and the AlphaTauri of Yuki Tsunoda were subject to extensive checks of every possible dimension. In addition, nine cars were checked specifically for oil consumption, and oil samples were taken from the Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton and Red Bull of Max Verstappen. Hamilton's car also donated a fuel sample.

What has not been seen until now in post-race scrutineering or at any other time during the weekend, is the FIA routinely taking a deep dive underneath the skin of a car and dismantling particular components for more detailed analysis.

The change of philosophy is so significant that it was revealed to the teams in a technical directive and then explained to the wider world via a note from the Bahrain GP stewards.

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Ferrari mechanics in the garage with one of their cars

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

"The reason for this process is because obviously cars have become more and more complicated, and very difficult to dismantle," says the FIA's head of single-seater technical matters, Nikolas Tombazis.

"And also, in a race weekend, there's very few opportunities, or no opportunities, to actually go into enough detail.

"All teams are deeply suspicious of their competitors, and they think, well, maybe team X or Y is doing something. And I'm sure that maybe on occasion, some things may have happened below our radar.

"We don't have any suspicions or anything now, but we thought it's a good practice to start checking cars a bit more thoroughly."

To help with the process, the FIA has added three staff members.

One reason for the advanced warning was to ensure that the teams always have engineers on duty who can deal with any queries that emerge from the inspections.

"On Sunday after the race they need to have the necessary support back at base if necessary," says Tombazis. "We don't want them to tell us 'John is actually at a barbecue. Sorry we don't have the guy.' We want that guy to be available.

"Clearly we hope that we never find something wrong, because we don't want people to be cheating of course. But in the remote chance that there was somebody cheating we would like the team when we start the check to tell us the other car is the same, or not the same.

"If we have any suspicion about any car, we can still select any other car to do the same, it doesn't change our normal operation in any way or shape. But being random it means that it can theoretically hit every car anytime and therefore if somebody had something dodgy, they will think about it twice."

What the new checks are not designed to reveal is anything akin to last year's biggest technical scandal, the Racing Point brake duct copying case:

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A mechanic works on the car of Valtteri Bottas, Mercedes-AMG F1

Photo by: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images

"The copying side, we do other checks for that. And we've done some already, for example, this year, and these are separate. These are more CAD and so on. They're not what we're doing Sunday night."

How will the process work?

Essentially, a car number is selected out of a hat. That car will undergo the usual scrutineering bay checks, and then be taken back to its garage.

"What would happen typically is that the car will be selected immediately after the chequered flag and communicated to all the teams," says Tombazis.

"That car will be fast-tracked through the platform and the weighing and the normal classic checks, so that it goes back to the team's garage as soon as possible.

"Two or three people from the FIA will be there to start with. Then the FIA people who finish the normal post-race [checks] will be joining them. It will start from two or three and it will end with five or six people there."

The actual job of taking the car to pieces will be done by the team's own mechanics.

"We don't have the knowledge," Tombazis concedes. "We have at least two people in our team who are senior mechanics, or past mechanics. And we've done that in order to have this higher level of familiarity with the cars.

"But the cars are fairly specialised nowadays and you can't just start going there and dismantling."

The FIA staff will know in advance which elements of the car they intend to address.

"We are going to be splitting the car in approximately 20 macro areas," Tombazis explains. "And we're going to be selecting two or three to check thoroughly each time. As we build a bit more confidence and we make sure the logistically we can handle it, we may increase that, hopefully."

Inevitably, there will be an element of time pressure. At flyaway races, cars and equipment have to be packed for freighting on Sunday evening, and in Europe there's always an urgency to get the cars into the transporters and away. Now teams will have to wait for the FIA guys to finish their work.

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Mechanics push Daniel Ricciardo, McLaren MCL35M, back into the garage

Photo by: Charles Coates / Motorsport Images

"There's no limit as to the time. So if we find there are some deeply troubling aspects, then the worst scenario is that we would say to the team, 'Sorry, you need to stay on here until we finish.'

"Clearly, we will try to be reasonable. And we don't want to be upsetting the whole world by making them lose their flight in the freight. And we do have the option if something is too complicated to put it in a box and seal it and then to check it afterwards.

"We haven't put a maximum amount of time, but we will try to be reasonable, and not to screw everybody's schedule."

An intriguing aspect of the checks is that while they are primarily about technical compliance, they will also give the FIA valuable information related to the policing of the cost cap.

"We would be doing this work anyway, unrelated to the cost cap," Tombazis explains. "However what we are doing more thoroughly during this process is recording parts of the car.

"The teams have to declare in their cost cap the inventory they use. Clearly a car has maybe 15,000 pieces on it. We can't check 15,000 pieces. But if a team says these are the 15,000 pieces that are on my car we can check 50 random components and check they're on their list, and basically keep them honest in that way."

The car chosen after the race in Bahrain was the Mercedes of third-place finisher Valtteri Bottas, and the focus was on its suspension.

A Mercedes could still be chosen randomly for checks at the next race, or the one after. The FIA also has the right to select a second car if it has a specific reason to do so.

"We will be doing this every race," says Tombazis. "I can't tell you that there won't be a race or two when maybe there's some other big drama going on, and maybe we will be distracted or something like that. It's not like we have to do it from a regulation point of view, but we want to do it.

"Occasionally, when we are a bit more used to it, we may choose two cars if necessary. Or if through the random process we've had a car that hasn't been selected for 15 races or something, we may decide to add it and do some extra checks, potentially. Or if we have suspicions, we may still decide to do it.

"But we want to have this random aspect so that any car can be checked at any time. So theoretically, the same car could happen five times.

 

They could get rid of the scrutineering tear downs by ::

SIMPLIFYING the ENGINEs. Simple 3.0 L V10s would do nicely.

 

Was just having a conversation with another fan who would strongly support a return to normally aspirated V-12s and a rpm limit of say 18,000. He wants the screaming back!! I'm with him.

 

It would be amazing if they knew anyone that had fully developed racing V-10 plans laying around that also happened to be somewhat cheap and on parity with each other.

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F1 sprint race plan set for green light as teams agree financial deal
By: Jonathan Noble
Apr 7, 2021, 8:14 AM
Formula 1 has cleared its last major hurdle over sprint qualifying trials, with sources revealing that teams have now agreed to a financial package.
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As previously reported by Autosport, F1’s desire to run Saturday sprint races at three grands prix this year had hit a snag with teams not happy about the extra costs involved.

Beyond some teams wanting a bigger financial compensation from F1 chiefs for the extra money it would cost to add three more races, the issue was further complicated by the impact this could have on cost cap limits.

But a push by some outfits to increase the cost cap by up to $1 million met resistance from some smaller teams who feared that the extra spending scope would be used for performance gains.

Following discussions over the past few weeks regarding the costs issue, multiple sources have confirmed that a financial proposal has been put forward that teams are happy with.

While the exact details have not been revealed, it is understood that teams will receive around $500,000 dollars for the extra three races – with the cost cap being lifted by that same amount.

Furthermore, if a team endures a hefty damage bill as the result of a major accident in a sprint race, then there is scope within the agreement for further leeway with an extra payment and a raised cost cap limit to cover this, so they are not unfairly penalised.

https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/f1-sprint-race-plan-set-for-green-light-as-teams-agree-financial-deal/6132619/

 

Sprint races are coming! Yeah!

 

Beurk !

 

I welcome them with caution.

Sprint races will open a new pandora box.

They may be good for the public, but disastrous for the teams.

 

I would've loved to seen some super high end 2 cycle engines like Pat Symonds had talked about. That would have had it all.

 

Suzuka will host the Japanese GP another three years. Agreement signed until 2024. This year's edition will be sponsored by Honda

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Really a great race track,
A lot of good and bad memories with this track ( 1987,1989,1990,1998,2000,2003,2006)

 

Good to see Japan secured. That said I wouldn't mind an occasional return to Fuji.

 

https://the-race.com/formula-1/f1-sprint-races-get-green-light-full-format-details-revealed/