Closer racing, championship drama, a cost cap. These are all things that are promised with the 2022 regulations. The set of regulations that promise to take F1 in a new direction that prioritises racing entertainment.
The hype for these regulations was real, and still is. However, there is one thing which has superseded the hype, and perhaps poses a threat to the reception of the new regulations: The 2021 Season.
The Underdog Season: 2021
To really understand what an unexpected season 2021 has turned out to be, I am going to have to take you all the way back to the beginning of the season, 21 races ago. (Seems like a lifetime ago doesn’t it?)
Mercedes had absolutely crushed the competition last year, and the regulations have essentially stayed the same, except for the floor designs being removed to prevent a Silverstone 2020 repeat. (They succeeded, I guess, except Qatar)
This was the season that nobody wanted, a mere stopgap to fill the void left by the postponement of the new regulations. In fact, the media pretty much focused mainly on asking how the teams were balancing this year and next year’s regulations’ development.
This focus stayed the same until pre-season came around, and went. Mercedes seemed to struggle, and Red Bull had a car that didn’t spin every time the car changed direction!
I must say this was about the point where I personally started getting exited about having a proper season, as did many. However, there still was the threat of the sandbag, as seen in 2019.
Thankfully, there was no sandbagging, and what followed testing was a refreshingly close Bahrain GP, then Imola, Portugal and so on. I mean, the very first race itself the lead was undecided until the last lap! Some serious foreshadowing there.
Race after race it was an open ended question as to who would win. Add in a few wildcard rounds like Azerbaijan 2021 and we have a season that is as exciting as it can get. (Current regulations or not)
To provide some context as to how this season has changed our standards, we have to look at Germany 2019, (AKA The race with the 50-sec Hamilton pit-stop)
That race was voted “Race of the decade” by fans. Even if you account for recency bias, that was one of the better races of that time period.
For those who followed both 2019 and 2021 season would argue that we’ve already had 1 or even 2 such high-octane races. This season was so crazy that many races switched roles. Paul Ricard was exciting, Sochi was exciting, and the Austria races were boring!
It really is a historical season and more importantly, has set the bar so tremendously high for the next season to match, if not, surpass.
All it takes is time
Time is key here. Ultimately, someone is going to nail the regulations more than the others. In 2014 it was Mercedes, and in 2017 it was Ferrari and Mercedes (If you look past Ferrari’s dismal reliability that year).
For an organisation as big as these teams are, momentum is everything. So if a team believes they have a game-changing innovation in their hands, the positivity spreads across the factory. At the end of the day we have a ripple effect of innovations that propel the team forward.
On the other hand, it’s really hard to keep innovating at the same rate as your rivals when you are leading. At some point, inevitably, the leader will slow down and the rest catch up. Toto Wolff, team principal of Mercedes has alluded to this many times.
That is exactly what happened in 2021. The regulations dragged Mercedes down and benefitted Red Bull which gave them them a proper shot at the championship since 2013. (Although the constructors seem sealed at this point)
Of course, the decision to split resources under the tight cost-cap environment has also played a key part. Whatever the case is, the fact that stands is that the last season of the current regulations also is the closest one.
The key here is to let things bake for a while. F1 should avoid pursuing a knee-jerk methodology on mitigating the errors/loopholes of the upcoming set of regs that will inevitably be present.
Eventually, no matter what the regulations, the competition catches up, and we have good racing!
The Risk Of Overdelivering
Flipping the script here for a little bit, let us say the current regulations hit the bulls-eye. We roll up to 2022 pre-season testing in Bahrain, and find that a new team is topping the timesheets every session. Would that be fun?
One thing I learnt from watching Formula E couple of years ago is that things being too close is also not a good thing.
Here, take this season, when we go into a race, we know 80% of the time either Max or Lewis will win, or at least they be in the top 5. Now, imagine a situation where Max wins a race, and then finishes P14 in the next race by pace.
A season as long as F1 has (9 months or so) needs a storyline that ties everything together. Think about how boring 2020 season was, and how come it feels like we could watch this season forever. If we see them as individual events, then it will become boring very quickly.
Having absolutely chaotic races like the one in Jeddah is always a pleasant surprise. It’s just that for F1 to make the model a sustainable one, too much chaos is also not good.
Plus F1 has heritage to uphold. Even the smallest thing like calling the Sprint race winner the “Pole Sitter” has upset many. One must not forget that dominance has been a part of F1 since its inception. So we can’t be mad if this dominance continues to be a part of the sport despite efforts to mitigate it.
A Healthy Direction
Ever since the takeover by Liberty Media, F1 has grown tremendously. The 2022 regulations are the biggest overhaul of design philosophy and overall approach to F1 since then.
Being entertainment-centric is a good thing as long as long-term interests are kept in mind, and from what we all can see they seem to be doing a good job of that. I just hope the publicly traded company does not sacrifice the grandioseness of the sport in the interest of profits.
At the time this article goes up, we don’t know who has won the championship, but either way, what everyone will appreciate is the fact that F1 have done the impossible by putting together 22 races across 20 countries at such an unstable time.
Every person involved within the sport has brushed off all their difficulties, put up with the stringent norms, and most importantly, have left their homes and families for several weeks at a time to contribute to the sport they love.
No season does justice to their hard work like this season. For now though, onwards with the most critical race of the season!