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Max Verstappen is set to win his third F1 title this weekend, and this will be the second season where he wins the title in a dominant fashion. Last season, he did it in Japan, and this time around, it appears that he will get this done in Qatar.
While it is to his and Red Bull's credit that they've built a car that has virtually no challenge on the entire grid, it's clear that the change in regulations has played a role as well.
Adrian Newey's brilliance and his understanding of the ground effect rules mean that Red Bull and Max Verstappen have stolen the march on the rest of the field. At the same time, if the regulations had not changed, in all likelihood we would have been looking at a battle between Red Bull and Mercedes at the front of the grid.
But the regulations were changed, and they were changed with the promise of making the sport better. There were certain targets that the new regulations were supposed to hit.
Two years into the regulations, and with Max Verstappen winning his second world title more or less unchallenged, what verdict should be passed about the regulations? Have they passed, or have they failed? Let's take a look.
To understand this, we will go through some of the objectives of the new regulations and, after two years, determine if those objectives have been achieved or not.
Max Verstappen dominance: Have the F1 regulations failed?
#1 The new cars were supposed to be easier to follow
One of the major objectives of the new generation of cars was to make them easier to follow and hence aid wheel-to-wheel racing.
In the previous generation of cars, the chasing F1 car would lose close to 50% of its performance because of turbulent air. With the ground effect era kicking in, this value was supposed to drop big time.
In 2022, we saw this come into effect immediately. Wheel-to-wheel racing was much better, and cars could follow each other. The battle for the race win between Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc was just epic, and it had multiple sequences of race leads changing hands. This has somewhat decreased this season, with the aero development on the wings making it hard to follow.
FIA has released the numbers this season as well that depict how last season, F1 was able to reduce the loss in performance of a chasing car to only 20% from the 50% number in the previous regulations. In 2023, however, the number has jumped to 35%, and it could increase further with car development as well.
Conclusion: Has F1 been able to make wheel-to-wheel racing better with the new regs? Yes, it has. But is that effect regressing as the cars develop? That's true as well.
In principle, these regulations are still a step forward from what we had with the previous generation, but they still need work to sustain them for a longer period of development.
#2 The field spread was supposed to decrease
This was one of the biggest objectives of the new regulations, as the aim was to have a restrictive set of regulations that aid in having a much smaller field spread as compared to what we've been used to.
This is surely something that has materialized. While Red Bull and Max Verstappen are at the front, we have a group of three teams in the chasing pack that includes Mercedes, Ferrari, and McLaren. Aston Martin and Alpine are not too far behind and could make the jump with one major upgrade.
Even if we look at the gap between Red Bull at the front and the last team, it's much smaller than the gaps in the previous regulations. There is no such thing as a backmarker anymore, as the midfield stretches from the 6th fastest team to the slowest one on the grid.
Conclusion: In terms of reducing the field spread, the regulations have hit a home run. There is the niggling factor of how far ahead Red Bull is, especially in the hands of Max Verstappen, but overall, if we have to give a verdict, the regulations have been successful in fulfilling this aspect.
#3 The sliding scale development time was supposed to not let one team dominate
Now, this is the most crucial one because it was engineered primarily to stop one team from running away with everything if it was first to nail the regulations.
A sliding-scale development time allocation was introduced to give the chasing pack an opportunity to catch up. What this means is that the team at the front of the field will have the least development time, while the team at the back of the grid will have the highest development time.
There has been some visible impact when we look at teams like Aston Martin and McLaren, but at the same time, the sharp end of the grid has remained unaffected.
Red Bull started the season with the fastest car on the grid. It already had the least development time, which was reduced even further due to its cost cap breach penalty. Despite that, no team has even reached the point where it could challenge Max Verstappen.
No team has come closer to challenging Red Bull, especially since Max Verstappen's non-victory in Singapore was nothing more than a one-off. This is where it's hard to find an argument in favor of the sliding scale.
Conclusion: The fact that Max Verstappen has not only been almost unchallenged since the start of the season but also has not seen any of the competitors close the gap to Red Bull is a bad look. In terms of achieving the objective, the sliding scale of development has failed.
Verdict
In terms of achieving objectives, the new regulations have been able to close the field spread to a large extent.
At the same time, Max Verstappen and Red Bull have kept the opposition at arm's length. There has been an improvement in wheel-to-wheel action, but the cars are becoming more difficult to follow by the day.
In terms of the sliding scale development time, it has had its positives (Aston Martin and McLaren's rise) and negatives (Red Bull's continued dominance) as well.
This is where I leave the verdict to my readers. What do you guys think? Has the new set of regulations been a failure? Or has there been relative success? Let me know in the comments section. Thanks for reading!
