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Chapter 1: What mid-season rule changes have been agreed in F1?
The Athletic. The race is on, and F1 has agreed modifications to the engine rules in an attempt to fix their big problems with the current power units, aimed at improving qualifying and safety in particular. But has it gone far enough? And how big an impact will it have on the on-track action from Miami onwards? I'm Ed Shaw, and joining me to give the verdict on the changes is John Noble.
Well, we've been waiting for this day for a while in this big extended gap in the schedule, John. They've had the meeting. They've agreed their proposals. So we know what's going to be in place for Miami. I think it's fair to say quite a long way short of a revolution, if anyone was expecting that. But logical, sensible changes, I guess, within what was possible.
Yeah, I think the fact that it's not superbly exciting, it all seems quite boring and sensible, probably means it's the right outcome for now because there is nothing outrageous here.
Chapter 2: How will the engine rule modifications impact F1 qualifying?
Everything has been introduced for a reason. The recharge limit reductions, the change in boost, what's being done for race starts, what's being done for wet weather. Everything's got a good reason. which means it's a good first step. Whether it addresses all the problems we've got with these 26 regulations, I'm sceptical. There may need to be more refinement as we go along.
We may find, as we've found with many elements of this regulation, unintended consequences, teams getting around things, or unexpected antics still get deployed to get around energy-starved cars. There may be lots of things to discover. But as a first step...
to feel that we're getting back towards a more normal qualifying, to avoid the risks of a repeat of the Oli Behrmann-Franco Colapinto crash. I think it's a good first step.
The bottom line is it was always going to be mitigation rather than complete solution for the simple reason that you're still stuck with the hardware. It's still a four megajoule battery you still need to deploy and harvest. So You cannot change the parameters and the way things operate to make it what might have previously been called normal. So there will be points where you're not deploying.
You are going to still have to adapt what you're doing to harvest. But it's all about trying to just make things a little bit more normal, particularly in qualifying. So we'll start there because they've changed the energy management parameters. So reduction in maximum permitted recharge on harvest.
a qualifying lap from eight megajoules down to seven megajoules, they say, encouraging more consistent flat out driving. And there's the super clipping change. So previously you're super clipping, which is when you're full throttle, but you're fully harvesting. Previously that limit was 250 kilowatts. Now it's 350 kilowatts. So that's now quicker than it was.
And the FIA suggested trying to reduce the super clip duration to approximately two to four seconds per lap, the FIA suggested. So this is a step in the right direction. I wouldn't call it a stride in the right direction, again, because of the limitations, but this should mean a slightly more normal performance profile over a qualifying lap.
Yes, it's two changes aimed at reducing what the FI has long called abnormal qualifying behaviours. If you had an unlimited recharge cap for qualifying, then at some tracks you would find drivers doing really weird stuff like lifting off halfway down straights or behaving strangely on preparation laps or doing lots of weird stuff because the gains you can get from effective harvesting...
would be much better than driving flat out.
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Chapter 3: What logical changes have been made to improve safety in F1?
So what you want to do, and it seems almost counterintuitive, to make qualifying more flat out, you give the drivers less energy, because now that energy recovery can be reached just by typical braking, so you can recover. And by increasing the super clipping, now it's as effective as lift and coast, but potentially even better now, because when you're super clipping flat,
throttles full to the floor, which means you're at the end of a straight, which means your active aero is open. So it's much more efficient now to recover 350 kilowatts with your wings open than to lift and coast with your wings closed and slow down sooner. So it should deter lift and coast, which is... I remember Espanocon telling us this in January.
I don't know if you were on the call with him, but you mentioned about there being lift and coast and qualifying. And this was the first realisation that, oh, I thought qualifying was going to be flat out. How have we ended up in this place? And qualifying has been some very strange antics this season. Drivers going quicker through going slower in corners.
The Charles Leclerc power limited quirk that we discovered in China. We found out about the Mercedes qualifying trick recently. with MG UK deployments, I think qualifying has been weirder in some aspects than how drivers have approached the racing, even though the racing has got its own issues. But if it can become more flat out, it's not going to be perfect.
We aren't going to rock up in Miami and drivers are suddenly back to qualifying decided by one-tenth because it was better before. management through some of the S's out the back of the corner or because they attacked better or those elements. Energy management is still going to be critical, but it should be much less critical than it was in Japan.
Yeah, there'll still be weirdness, but it's rounding off the edges of that, I think is probably the best way to put it. Anybody who thought that you could kind of click your fingers and magically solve it, that was never going to happen because the only way you could do that is by
basically getting rid of the the battery deployment and obviously they're not physically going to make those big changes to the power units and you don't want a car that's putting out the power that's somewhere between f2 and f3 level that's clearly not practical so it will help in in that regard
Obviously, what people want to see is drivers flat out in the fast corners in particular, and there's still going to be trade-offs there, because if you go back to a circuit like Suzuka, it's still not necessarily particularly useful to go through 130R flat out, especially given you'll have been on full throttle for quite a long time before you get there. So these...
things these artifacts these weirdnesses whatever you want to call them they're still going to be there but just toned down so yeah mitigation not solution again yeah and i think we need to see what happens as well because we can have big plans for these regulations but until you're in the heat of competition until drivers are working out where they need to sacrifice lap time where it can be gained how the deployment patterns what is the best way to approach a lap
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Chapter 4: How do the new energy management parameters affect race starts?
The other is starts. These cars are very hard to get away from the line. The turbos need spooling up. And part of the regulations mandated that you cannot use the MGU-K below 50 kilometres an hour. So any...
power that he's filling in with the turbo you can't do until you hit a certain speed and this has triggered the difficult starts it triggered driver complaints before the start of the season it triggered the FIA to change the pre-start procedure says it's now this extra five seconds to help drivers get away before the lights get going. It's all made an improvement, but it didn't cure everything.
We had a lucky escape in Australia with Franco Colapinto and Liam Lawson. Quite how they missed each other remains complete fluke, I think. But, The poor start still continued. Max Verstappen's had some poor getaways. Even George Russell and Kimi Antonelli haven't had great starts. Max Verstappen's had some terrible launches.
So the danger has remained and it's been an issue that drivers have pushed for. So the idea now that is that if a driver makes a poor getaway, if the system detects it's a botched start... the MGK will now fill in and allow the car to at least get away a little bit. So it'll probably fill in some of the power deployment to get the turbo spooled up so they can at least pull away a little bit.
And there was an interesting note in the FI document today made clear that by allowing the MGK to, to deploy below 50 kilometres an hour, you can inevitably think teams may go, oh, actually, we could make use of that and make a better start. And we'll do deliberately botched starts, use the MGK, and surely that'll be an advantage.
But they're going to make sure the regulations don't allow it so this doesn't become a performance benefit.
Yeah, and I think in those scenarios, you'll still see the slow getaways. because obviously you're going to be limited. You've got that immediate talk, but it's limited. So it will get you rolling quicker, which is good. And it seems like quite a logical thing. Again, the devil's in the detail with these things, and exactly how it works remains to be seen. But it seems quite a pragmatic solution.
The thing I quite like about it is they're using something they've got there, because that rule about not being able to deploy
initially is to stop trickery with launch control and all these sorts of things but that's quite a clever idea just to use something that is there there's power there's energy sat there in your battery you can use to create power when you have not got it from the uh from the the v6 so that actually is an area where these rigs do give you that elegant solution yeah and it's not about stopping poor getaways it's not about if you make a bad start then you get away normally and no notices you will still have poor starts now this wouldn't have stopped
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