Should the 2022 cars be moved to 2023?

[jjn9128]

IF the 2022 rules work as planned it should be fine. Hopefully even McLaren, Aston and Ferrari can get in on the action. It’s a big if in my opinion though. Been burned too many times by the FIA over promising

[El Scorchio]

Yes for the gaps and the racing, rule changes are a bad thing. But from an engineering perspective it gets more interesting if there are changes..

And also massive deregulation would allow for far more creativity and problem solving, again though at the risk of creating huge, huge gaps in team vs team performance.

Another trouble is that it's at huge odds with controlling any costs as well. I'm sure Mercedes, Ferrari and RBR could do some staggering things with an open ever changing rule book but then most of the rest of the grid would probably just pull out of the sport.

[Andres125sx]

With Merc and RBR so tight at the front, and the midfield getting super close, should the switch to new cars be put off for another year to see if we can have a 3-6 way battle in the WCC and a 6-12 way battle in the WDC in 2022?

Wait... are you suggesting with this ruleset in 2022, Mercedes, RBR, Ferrari, McLaren, Alpine and... Alpha Tauri? will fight for the WDC? No way man, that will never happen with this ruleset, the only chance for that to happen is with the new 2022 rules and cost cap, so if that´s your desire, you should be pushing for the opposite you´re actually doing


You´re right about the new rules-> some team dominates, but that´s specially true without a cost cap, when some team can invest 500 millions while most of them can only invest under 100 wich is current scenario, then domination is almost unavoidable. But when no team can invest significantly more than the rest (2022 ruleset and cost cap)... well, actually nobody knows as that did never happen before in F1, but the idea is to make if more fair for all teams and avoid domination from the big ones, so after decades asking for this, let´s give it a chance and we´ll see what happens

[Zynerji]

I've given it a chance in the past... Several times.

The more restricted the budget, the more likely one team finds a solution that the others can't copy and we get 20 walk-off races.

That's my 2022 bet currently. I just don't know what team yet..

[Just_a_fan]

I've given it a chance in the past... Several times.

The more restricted the budget, the more likely one team finds a solution that the others can't copy and we get 20 walk-off races.

That's my 2022 bet currently. I just don't know what team yet..

That is the problem with cost caps. It's the same problem as with unlimited budgets except that in that case, the poorer teams have no chance to catch up. In the cost cap situation, if most teams get near their cost cap limit, they will be unable to move to a new "must have" feature until at least the end of the season, and even then they might not be able to make it work for two or three seasons if it takes a lot of work tuning it to get it working properly.

The Law of Unintended Consequences is always there, waiting to bite the unwary.

[Herr_Koos]

I've given it a chance in the past... Several times.

The more restricted the budget, the more likely one team finds a solution that the others can't copy and we get 20 walk-off races.

That's my 2022 bet currently. I just don't know what team yet..

The budget is restrictive, yes, but so are the rules, more so than at any point in F1 history. Most of the big team technical directors have already said that there is very limited scope for a "silver bullet" under these rules, which is why someone like Adrian Newey isn't all that excited about them. These are the closest thing to spec chassis and aero F1 has ever had, so unless there is a spectacular loophole that no one has seen yet, the teams will very quickly converge on a similar interpretation of the rules.

[Zynerji]

Time will show that the 2021 is the closest season in decades because of the carry-over and rule change/budget cap for the following year.

They finally figured out how to close up the field, just to give it all away.

I hope I'm wrong on this, but the geometry is real.

[nzjrs]

Time will show that the 2021 is the closest season in decades because of the carry-over and rule change/budget cap for the following year.

They finally figured out how to close up the field, just to give it all away.

I hope I'm wrong on this, but the geometry is real.

One could say they discovered how to close up the field; have the teams spend 12 billion dollars. Next time they are hoping to close the field up for only 8 billion dollars, which is a reasonable goal.

[Just_a_fan]

Time will show that the 2021 is the closest season in decades because of the carry-over and rule change/budget cap for the following year.

They finally figured out how to close up the field, just to give it all away.

I hope I'm wrong on this, but the geometry is real.

They haven't closed it up enough though, have they? Realistically only 2 teams can win this year barring incidents. Yes, that's a 100% improvement on what some previous seasons have been, but it's still not that good. The midfield is hotting up nicely which is great but a sideshow. The tail is still just making up numbers.

Hopefully the proposed changes next year bring us a few teams able to win on merit with the rest having a chance for good points etc.

In an ideal series, all of the teams would be able to win but that's never been the case before now and it's unlikely to ever be the case.

[jjn9128]

They haven't closed it up enough though, have they? Realistically only 2 teams can win this year barring incidents. Yes, that's a 100% improvement on what some previous seasons have been, but it's still not that good. The midfield is hotting up nicely which is great but a sideshow. The tail is still just making up numbers.

Hopefully the proposed changes next year bring us a few teams able to win on merit with the rest having a chance for good points etc.

In an ideal series, all of the teams would be able to win but that's never been the case before now and it's unlikely to ever be the case.

It has closed up quite a lot, the midfield is a lot closer to the pointy end than ahs been the case for a while!

[El Scorchio]

Time will show that the 2021 is the closest season in decades because of the carry-over and rule change/budget cap for the following year.

They finally figured out how to close up the field, just to give it all away.

I hope I'm wrong on this, but the geometry is real.

Disagree. (edit- respectfully disagree!) They haven't figured anything out so much as lucked into it. This year is an unintended perfect storm brought about by the pandemic happening just as an enormous rule change and budget cap was about to. They made some last minute contingency rules (the enforced floor etc. changes) and massively restricted what teams were allowed to do with changing their cars, so they are all really stuck with patchwork solutions to make the best out of what they already had. They had no idea of the outcome. It could just as easily have been that these rules really helped Mercedes and Aston absolutely smash everyone else by a second a lap. Were this a normal year, you can bet Mercedes (and most others) would have made some substantial changes to their car by now, but the unique constraints of this year only, mean they can't unless they want to handicap themselves for the next X amount of years.

You'll never be able to recreate that and it's absolute dumb luck rather than design that we have the situation this season. (Unless you subscribe to the Mercedes being purposely hobbled by the interim rules theory, but let's not open that box again) But we should treasure this season for what all this madness has brought us so far. We probably won't ever get another one like it.

[Just_a_fan]

They haven't closed it up enough though, have they? Realistically only 2 teams can win this year barring incidents. Yes, that's a 100% improvement on what some previous seasons have been, but it's still not that good. The midfield is hotting up nicely which is great but a sideshow. The tail is still just making up numbers.

Hopefully the proposed changes next year bring us a few teams able to win on merit with the rest having a chance for good points etc.

In an ideal series, all of the teams would be able to win but that's never been the case before now and it's unlikely to ever be the case.

It has closed up quite a lot, the midfield is a lot closer to the pointy end than ahs been the case for a while!

Yes, but very much still a mid field, that's the point I was making. At the moment, assuming both Red Bulls and Mercs finish the race and haven't had an incident that put them out of place, they will fill the podium places. Others can pick up podium places but only if the top four cars have an incident. How much better if McLaren could sit there on the grid and think "we can take a win here on merit", for example? Hopefully we'll see that happen next year.

[Just_a_fan]

Time will show that the 2021 is the closest season in decades because of the carry-over and rule change/budget cap for the following year.

They finally figured out how to close up the field, just to give it all away.

I hope I'm wrong on this, but the geometry is real.

Disagree. They haven't figured anything out so much as lucked into it. This year is an unintended perfect storm brought about by the pandemic happening just as an enormous rule change and budget cap was about to. They made some last minute contingency rules (the enforced floor etc. changes) and massively restricted what teams were allowed to do with changing their cars, so they are all really stuck with patchwork solutions to make the best out of what they already had. They had no idea of the outcome. It could just as easily have been that these rules really helped Mercedes and Aston absolutely smash everyone else by a second a lap. Were this a normal year, you can bet Mercedes (and most others) would have made some substantial changes to their car by now, but the unique constraints of this year only, mean they can't unless they want to handicap themselves for the next X amount of years.

You'll never be able to recreate that and it's absolute dumb luck rather than design that we have the situation this season. (Unless you subscribe to the Mercedes being purposely hobbled by the interim rules theory, but let's not open that box again) But we should treasure this season for what all this madness has brought us so far. We probably won't ever get another one like it.

Good point. If they hadn't changed the floor rules, the likelihood is that Mercedes would be ahead of Red Bull just as they were last year. That was just luck, really, that circumstances conspired to fiddle with the top order a touch. Let's not forget that the floor rule change was brought in to help Pirelli, not as an attempt to shake up the order. That it did was down to luck, nothing more.

[DChemTech]

Time will show that the 2021 is the closest season in decades because of the carry-over and rule change/budget cap for the following year.

They finally figured out how to close up the field, just to give it all away.

I hope I'm wrong on this, but the geometry is real.

Close-up? Not really, I'm with Scorchio on this one. And anyhow, that's the top 2 spenders performing more or less equal anyway. On the whole, there is a strong correlation between success rate, and the depth of ones pockets. That's not a sport. It doesn't have to do with the talents of your drivers, or the talents of your engineers to be creative with limited resources, just with how many resources one can buy - it's a spending competition, just like soccer these days. Of course, if you were to freeze the rules for a long time, there will be convergence - but the biggest spenders still have disproportional odds at winning, because they have more resources to exploit those asymptotic gains.

Sure, on a level playing field, one team may gain utter dominance. But at least that dominance is due to the talents of their athletes - their engineers being substantially more creative than those of the competition, given the same resources. That's fine, that's what sports are about. Being the best, smartest, most creative in equal competition. At least (on an ideal level playing field), you can not predict who is the most likely to stand out purely on basis of their wallet size.

I'd much rather see a situation where each team has in principle equal odds at utter domination, than a situation where the odds are intrinsically linked to spending capacity.

[nzjrs]

I don't even think people agree on any axioms (all else kept equal) other than "on a long enough timescale the field will converge" which seems a truism.

So what other axioms can people agree on?