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The 2022 season ushered in a new era in F1 with the reintroduction of ground-effect cars last seen in the 1980s. The aim behind scrapping the previous aerodynamic philosophy was to improve wheel-to-wheel racing. As a sport, one of the biggest issues plaguing F1 for decades was the inability of the cars to race against each other.
The reason behind that was the turbulent air produced by the leading car that completely disrupted the aerodynamic efficiency of the one behind it. As a result, it was very tough to follow other cars and hence pull off overtakes. The 2022 F1 season saw the introduction of a new set of regulations that were supposed to make wheel-to-wheel racing much better.
As it turns out, wheel-to-wheel racing has surely improved and the quality of racing is certainly better compared to what we had in the previous set of regulations. Having said that, the 2023 F1 season will be the second year of these regulations and by far, it is going to be their biggest test.
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#1 The F1 field spread must reduce
One of the targeted areas where F1 rules were supposed to make a change was in the field spread. The regulations are far more prescriptive as well as restrictive in terms of car design. What this is supposed to do is reduce the possibility of one team finding a magic bullet and attaining an unassailable advantage over the others.
This was something that Mercedes did in 2014 and bore the benefit of it throughout the turbo-hybrid era. Brawn GP did the same and won the title in 2009. The new regulations are supposed to prevent that. Conventionally, the gap between the frontrunners, the midfield, and the backmarkers has been quite big. Consequently, we tend to see a monopoly in the teams that feature on the podium.
The new regulations are supposed to compress this gap. In fairness, the regulations were unable to achieve this in the first year. A significant gap had developed again between the frontrunners and the rest of the field. The occurrence, however, was put down to 2022 being the first season of the regulations.
These concessions will not be afforded in the second season and the teams will have to start putting the pieces together. The 2023 F1 season must feature a smaller field spread for the new regulations to be considered a success.
#2 The impact of the sliding scale development time allocation
The sliding scale development time means that the team that finishes first in the championship is given the least amount of development time on the grid. This value continues to increase from the team that was second, third, and so on until the one that was placed last.
The purpose of introducing the sliding scale was to not let a single team run away from the rest of the field. The best-placed team having the least development time and the worst-placed team getting the most development time is supposed to theoretically close the gap between the teams.
It is fair to say that not every team will have the same level of efficiency to extract the same amount of lap time from a respective unit of development time. Hence, some variability could arise. At the same time, however, the sliding scale should, in essence, still more or less work if we consider all 10 teams.
This is where the 2023 season is critical. If we do not see the sliding scale having an impact then that should ideally mean that the methodology is probably flawed and needs to be changed.
#3 Porpoising cannot be the biggest talking point this F1 season
Arguably the most contentious debate of last season was porpoising and the sport needs to be careful on that front. It cannot afford to have another season where cars are bouncing mercilessly on the straights and leaving the drivers hurt and damaged. Even last season, we've seen teams get used to porpoising, and by mid-season and later, it was no longer a major issue.
However, technical engineers from teams like Red Bull and Aston Martin have claimed that porpoising is in the DNA of these cars, and will continue to manifest itself in one way or another. What needs to be seen now is the extent to which this porpoising effect surfaces. We cannot return to a situation where drivers start complaining about back problems because the cars are just too aggressive on their bodies.
