FIA’s Tombazis sees significant progress on F1’s 2022 targets, but also lessons for the sport’s next era | RACER

The FIA ​​believes it has made significant progress towards achieving its goals of improving Formula 1 since 2022, but also has areas where it wants to continue to improve under the next set of regulations.

In 2022, new cars were introduced with ground effect aerodynamics, aiming to change the way downforce is generated so that cars can track better. That was part of a wider range of changes aimed at making the sport more sustainable – including a budget cap and aerodynamic testing restrictions – and FIA director Nikolas Tombazis says getting costs under control has been a major area for improvement in recent times.

“I think we have taken an important step in the right direction on most of these objectives, but I certainly couldn’t claim success on all counts – I wouldn’t give us an A star,” Tombazis said. “I would give us a B or a C or something like that, but I think we’re moving in the right direction.

“Let’s go one by one. In the field of sustainable sports, we have introduced the financial regulations. Obviously, due to the delay of the technical regulations due to COVID, the financial regulations came at the very end of the previous cycle. [in 2021]but they came into proper strength during this cycle.

“I think that, on the whole, the financial regulations have been a success. They have brought a lot of financial sustainability and profitability to the sport and the teams and they have contributed to a more level playing field, making teams assets that… even the bottom of the grid (the last team in terms of performance) is economically sound and not at risk of collapse, whereas before we had a few teams that were always on the brink of financial collapse.

“So I think we can certainly say financially that things have gone in the right direction. Have the financial regulations been a total success? No, I think we have learned a lot of things, which we have revised for the 2026 regulations. Now that we have about five years of experience with it, we have realized how complicated it is to audit the financial regulations of teams with such different business models and ways of working, etc.

“So it’s an extremely complicated thing, which we have a very good team for, but it’s just extremely complex and has made the sport a lot more difficult to regulate. But overall, I think we absolutely cannot imagine not having financial regulations now, so I think that has been a success.”

Ahead of the introduction of new aerodynamic and power unit rules, Tombazis says the previous ruleset started from a position of strength but developed in a way that did not allow the FIA ​​to prevent the impact of dirty air from becoming problematic again towards the end of the cycle.

“The technical side, I think, yeah, definitely, the cars got to the point where they could race each other more closely,” he said. “I would say where we didn’t give ourselves full marks, there were a few… I wouldn’t call them loopholes entirely, but there were certainly some parts of the regulations where they were a bit too permissive in some areas, and they allowed teams to adopt solutions that created outwash in a dynamic way, and therefore jeopardized some of the very good work done on overtaking.

“So that’s why we saw, [in] in the very first days of 2022 everyone said how well they could follow and everyone was very happy, and nowadays it is quite difficult, I would say. So in that respect I would say we haven’t been able to control that parameter as well as we would have liked.

“In terms of close racing, I think it has been achieved quite objectively, the goal of closer racing in terms of performance differences. I think we have already started with smaller performance differences from the first year of the regulations (if you look at the statistics from the first to the last type) and these have become even smaller with the convergence. So I think that has been a good thing.”

“But like I said, I would have loved it if cars today could get into the DRS zone even more easily, if that deterioration in aerodynamic properties hadn’t happened. So I think that’s something we’ve definitely learned.

“There were obviously some technical challenges, for example how stiff the cars are, these kinds of parameters. I think there are things we have to learn from and hopefully make a step forward next year.”