'FIA decision distorts championship fight before it has even started'
F1 News
- Ludo van Denderen
The FIA announced last week that stricter rules will be introduced to further reduce the use of (too) flexible front wings on Formula 1 cars. These new rules will not take effect immediately at the start of the new season, but only at the Spanish Grand Prix. Gary Anderson, former F1 designer, thinks that was not a wise decision to make.
Currently, technical regulations state that the wings cannot bend more than 15 millimetres. That will now be changed to a maximum of 10 millimetres. The method of how they measure the wings will also be changed, making it harder to play around with the rules.
Anderson, who has worked in the past for Jordan, Stewart and Jaguar, among others, said an adjustment to the technical regulations should have taken effect immediately at the start of the new season. Indeed, according to Anderson, it now creates two championships: The first eight races in which the 'old' rules apply and then 16 Grands Prix in which must operate under the changed regulations. Indeed, it is easy to predict that with such a big change, the concept of the entire car actually changes.
Anderson expects impact of new rules
"As far as I’m concerned, this is distorting the championship fight before it has even started," says Anderson at The Race, although he finds it hard to estimate the impact on a car-by-car or driver-by-driver basis.
"It's more about what each car needs to get the best performance out of it, but it is a 33% reduction in the allowable deflection so it will have an impact. In some cases that will be positive, in others negative."
According to Anderson, it is not 'just' about a different front wing, but how it works will affect its correlation with the floor, the outer edges of the floor and the rear wing to generate the best airflow. As a result, there may be teams that are fast before the change, but may suddenly lack performance after the modification - or vice versa.
This article was written in collaboration with Norberto Mujica.
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