F1 new car design 2021

Image via Official F1 twitter account: @F1

F1 unveils 2021 car design: Futuristic and sleek but slower

After months of wrangling, F1 has finally decided on the 2021 rules and fans have been given a look at a mock up of the ‘futuristic’ but slower new-look car.

F1 new car design 2021

Image via Official F1 twitter account: @F1

Not only has Formula 1 finally agreed a new set of regulations for 2021 but it has been given unanimous support from the World Motor Sport Council.

After months of debate and disagreement, F1 bosses have presented the new regulations that will cover the technical, sporting and financial aspects of the sport.

2021 F1 car will be futuristic but slower

Billed as ‘futuristic’, Formula 1 will move towards a new ground effect design in 2021 which, at least the bosses hope, will make for better racing.

The new design should allow the cars to follow closely, something today’s cars struggle to do once they are within two seconds of each other and have to deal with dirty air.

Downforce will be reduced and minimum weight increased.

That, though, means slower cars according to the FIA’s head of single seater matters Nikolas Tombazis.

“We are expecting cars to be approximately 3 – 3.5 seconds slower per lap,” he said.

“But we don’t think that is the key parameter of the spectacle. We feel the raceability is the main target.

“We haven’t been focusing on an exact level of performance.

“We cannot predict exactly where the downforce will end up compared to the current cars, it will be a bit less after the development has been carried out.

“But even the car that has been developed in CFD and developed in the wind tunnel has already got a respectable amount of performance.

“It has been developed by a relatively small number of aerodynamicists and hours in the wind tunnel compared to a normal team.”

However, F1 sporting boss Ross Brawn is confident that this is the way to go, telling Autosport that F1 made a mistake in 2017 when it prioritised speed over passing.

“These cars from 2016 to 2017 had a huge increase in downforce, and it is worth thinking back on that experience because it was done for reasons I don’t understand,” he said.

“The huge increase in downforce was ‘let’s make the cars go faster, let’s make F1 better’.

“But what we have actually done is made it worse because the cars can’t race each other.

“The cars are very quick now but they are not raceable.

“The reality is the performance of these new cars is about where we were in 2016 and I don’t think anyone was complaining about the cars being slow.”

More races, shorter race weekends

As of 2021, Formula 1 could visit 25 grand prix venues, even more than next season’s record 22.

But with team bosses and drivers alike saying it will place undue stress on team personnel, a consensus for a shorter race weekend has been agreed.

Instead of the weekend running from Thursday to Sunday, it will be Friday to Sunday with Thursday’s media commitments and scrutineering moved to Friday mornings.

Friday will still compromise two practice sessions, they’ll just be shorter.

“Some of the key changes [to the Sporting Regulations] are the maximum number of races will be set to 25,” explained Brawn.

“But in correspondence with that, we are changing the format of the race weekend.

“Promoters rely on a three-day race weekend, but we are changing the format of a Friday so all the activities that take place on Thursday will be condensed into a Friday.

“So for instance, scrutineering will take place on Friday morning and there will still two practice sessions, possibly shorter, in the afternoon.

“We’ll still get pretty close to same amount of track time but it will make it more efficient.

“The teams have been very co-operative on this process and most feel they can come to a race weekend at least one day later than they currently do.”

Long-awaited budget cap will ‘have teeth’

After years of out of control spending and a widening gap between the have and have-nots, Formula 1 is finally stepping in with a budget cap.

As part of the 2021 rules a $175m cap has been agreed by all ten teams and ratified by the World Motor Sport Council.

How they spend that money is up to each team.

Although the financial regulations still need to be refined, Brawn has already warned the teams not to step over the cap or they will lose their points in the championship.

“Financial regulations are the dramatic change in F1,” he said. “We’ve tried for these in the past, and we’ve not been successful.

“I think the crucial thing about the financial regulations now is that they are part of the FIA regulations.

“So the sanctions for breaching financial regulations will be sporting penalties of some sort, depending on the severity of the breach.

“Whereas before we had the resource restriction, which was a gentlemen’s agreement between teams – well there’s not many gentlemen in the paddock I’m afraid, and that was a failure.

“But this has teeth. If you fraudulently breach the financial regulations, you will be losing your championship. So it has serious consequences if teams breach these regulations.”

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