F1’s ground-breaking regulation changes have been postponed for a year (to 2022), meaning that teams will largely be carrying over the cars they used last season. Nonetheless, there are a few minor changes ahead of this season. In Part 1 of this season preview, I look at some of the regulation changes that have been made and how this affects F1 this year.
Financial Regulations
The budget cap has been a complicated goal to achieve. The document outlining the policing of the new rules, which was first published in October 2019, runs 41 pages. The original cap was to be set at $175 million for a season of 21 races. This was later brought down to $145 million after the pandemic struck. Under the terms of these rules, the limit increases by $1 million per race if there are more than 21 races.
The key thing about the cost cap is not what it covers but rather what it still allows. There are no fewer than 20 different lines on a team’s budget and what exactly is excluded from the $145 million figure. This includes all marketing costs, driver salaries, and the salaries of the three highest-paid employees. These regulations will remain in place until 2026, with the budget being reduced to $140 million in 2022 and further down to $135 million in 2022.
In the event that a team breaks the financial regulations, the team can be penalised in a combination of three separate ways. For a procedural violation teams will be fined on a case-by-case basis. Teams can be given a range of punishments for exceeding their annual budget which includes; being deducted championship points, having reduced testing time, a race ban, or disqualification from the championship in the most severe cases of rule breaches.
Other financial changes have been made under the Concorde Agreement, which is the secretive contract between commercial rights holder (Liberty Media) and the 10 teams. This agreement deals with prize money amongst other contractual issues. Prize money has been slightly altered for 2021 onwards but the full details are kept under wraps.
What has been revealed are the columns. The money was previously divided into two so-called columns from the F1 prize fund: one column where the money is divided equally between the 10 teams; the other column where the money is being divided based on performance. The percentage splits in this second column used to be 19-16-13-11-10-9-7-6-5-4, but rumours are that under the new deal, the Constructors’ Champion will get 14% and the 10th team will 6%. If the overall pot is bigger (as was the plan) then the bigger teams would get less than they used to and the smaller teams would get more. What needs to be kept in mind, however, is that the pot comes from the revenue of the previous season. This was $2 billion in 2019, but this number will have dropped drastically for 2020.
The changes mean that smaller teams should see an increase of prize money from around $50 million a season to nearly $70 million, which should cover their annual expenditure and will hopefully incentivise new teams to enter the sport. This might not be as big of an incentive as you would suspect, however, because there is a $200 million entry fee for new teams, which still poses a large barrier to overcome.
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the huge costs of F1, these changes seem to be a positive step, especially from a competitive stance. It is impossible to expect teams like Williams and Haas to compete on their $100 million budgets when Mercedes and Ferrari were previously spending upwards of four times that amount. The changes may not change F1 immediately, but this should be a step towards a more level playing field in the long term.
Technical Regulations
Whilst the cars are a continuation, teams have had some minor adjustments to grapple with during the winter. The most notable change is to the floor of the cars. These have been changed in order to reduce downforce levels. Wherein 2020 the floor was permitted to run in a straight line from an area adjacent to the cockpit back to a point ahead of the rear tyre, floors in 2021 will be diagonal. This is because the point ahead of the tyre will be moved 100 millimetres (3.9 in) inboard. The changes to the floor will be most notable when viewing cars from above.
Mercedes dual-axis system (DAS) will be banned for this year. The device allowed their drivers to change the toe of the front tyres to optimise grip and was operated by pushing and pulling on the steering wheel. Red Bull had previously appealed the system during the 2020 season, but the FIA deemed it legal at the time.
Other small changes include the removal of some slots on the edge of the floor, brake duct winglets will be narrowed by 40 millimetres (1.6 in), and diffuser fences will be narrowed by 50 millimetres (2.0 in). The four changes for 2021 are predicted to reduce downforce levels by 10%. It is expected that teams will have recuperated most of that loss over winter development.
In addition, a token system was introduced for developing outside of the changes mentioned above. Teams were given two tokens where they could develop new parts for 2021. For example, Alfa Romeo spent their tokens on a new nose and front wing assembly.
Overall, the changes are minor, but they ensure that the teams still had some work over winter to complete.
Other changes to note
1) Rookie drivers: Teams must run a driver with less than two Grand Prix starts to their name during at least one Friday free practice session. Haas and AlphaTauri have already satisfied this rule as they are running rookie drivers this season as part of their line-up.
2) Race weekend structure: Two changes have been made to the race weekend structure:
- Firstly, Friday free practice sessions will be reduced from 90 minutes to 60 minutes.
- Secondly, cars will be under parc fermé conditions following the end of FP3 instead of qualifying, further restricting teams and drivers from making major changes to setups ahead of the race.
3) Start times: F1 has returned to pre-2018 race start times at multiple Grand Prix. All races will return to start on the hour, having started at ten past the hour for the last three seasons, whilst European races will revert to 3pm local start times. For fans in the UK, this means that all European races apart from Portugal and Silverstone will be lights out at 2pm.
4) Race window: The race window for races that have been red-flagged has been cut from 4 hours to 3.
5) Support bill: The W-Series joins the F1 support bill, having previously ran with DTM. The series joins Formula 2, Formula 3 (now on alternate race weekends) and Porsche Supercup at selected weekends.
6) Sprint races: Discussions are ongoing about potential sprint races to be run on a Saturday. Whilst the format is yet to be agreed upon by the teams, Silverstone, Monza and São Paulo have been selected as the tracks where these races would take part if the plan is approved.
7) Safety and medical cars: From the 2021 season, suppliers of the safety and medical car will alternate between Aston Martin and Mercedes, after Daimler (Mercedes’ owners) bought a 20% stake in the British company. Aston Martin’s safety car will be an adapted Vantage, whilst the medical car will be a DBX.
8) Tyre rule: Following Mercedes’ error of fitting Valtteri Bottas’ front tyres to George Russell’s car at the 2020 Sakhir Grand Prix, the rule dictating the penalties for this has changed. Drivers using sets allocated to another driver on their cars will be permitted to complete two laps before the driver must pit to correct the error before facing a penalty. Under the previous rules, drivers could be disqualified as soon as such error had occurred. The rule also applies to drivers using mixed compounds, last seen with Valtteri Bottas at the 2015 Belgian Grand Prix.
To answer the question, no, 2021 isn’t a continuation of 2020. The cars may largely be the same but considering the circumstances F1 is facing, the minor changes are still more than what we have been seeing from other seasons. The budget cap and sprint races are two major changes to keep an eye out for this season, as it will be interesting to see how teams adapt to these.
Part 2 of the F1 2021 Season Preview will take a look at calendar changes and the driver line ups.