The performance of the cars varies depending on the physiognomy of the circuits included in the Formula 1 calendar, something with which, together with the strategy, all of them play to try to finish ahead on Sunday.
The 2022 Formula 1 season will bring together a long list of changes in all areas with respect to its predecessors focused on one objective par excellence: to promote a greater spectacle on the track, with single-seaters that allow drivers to fight face to face with greater solvency when chasing each other on the asphalt.
February 23 will be the first day of action at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya for some cars that will be presented in the previous days in a championship that will officially start on March 20 in Bahrain.
The significant reduction in the downforce of the single-seaters, more similar in this sense to a Formula 2 than to a car of the premier class of traditional motorsport, riddled with flaps and flow redirectors, will mean the most drastic change along with the passage of 13 inch tires to about 18 inches, a novelty for which Pirelli confesses to be prepared.
Goodbye to the strategic factor … So what?
In today’s Formula 1, when your opponent is faster on the track, the options to try to face that superiority are reduced to the strategy in the stops: make a undercut or a overcut, that is, to stop before or after him, in order to profit from it and go ahead once both sides have made the corresponding passage through the box.
Mario Isola, head of Pirelli, revealed that, at least for the moment, and waiting for the 2022 cars to prove it on the track, from the sole supplier of Formula 1 tires they trust keep the rythm they have developed to date.
“We expect performance in line with current tires, but the car is different, the downforce is different and we may have a Small difference in performance, ”explained Isola.
Asked how these changes will affect strategy, the Italian manager threw balls out, advocating for cars so evenly matched that the fact that each and every Grand Prix is based on the same tactic will not matter.
«I hope that most of the races are to one stopSimply because if you have less degradation there is no reason to make more than one stop. If we see really close races and we have action on the track, who cares about the pitstops?Isola summarized.
Fundamental changes
In the test Sets that took place in Abu Dhabi after the conclusion of the Grand Prix, in which cars from 2021 with young drivers at the controls and cars from 2018 and 2019 could be seen using 18-inch tires from 2022, Pirelli concluded its work in the absence of the 2022 preseason to begin.
The fact of having to test their prototypes in ‘old’ cars, different from those that will use said tires, is a burden that cannot be got rid of. «Every year is the same: We never have the possibility to test something in the final version of a car, we always use cars that are not the ones we are going to use in the following season, simply because they are not available, so that is part of the challenge, ”said Isola.
“With larger diameter tires, they had to trim the car floor at the rear and adjust the suspension. The teams had to work on the car to fit the new tires and adjust the body height, ”he added.
Finally, Isola stressed that by 2022 not only the tires will change, but also the braking system and the method used by the teams to put the tires in temperature and give them the appropriate pressures. «Nowadays they use a lot the brakes to define the heat that enters the rim to achieve a certain air temperature and, therefore, the tire pressure that they want to achieve ”, he analyzed.
“In 2022, the gap between the rim and the brake is going to be much larger; it’s a completely different situation from 2021 »
“Next year, the gap between the rim and the brake is going to be much larger; It will not be two millimeters, but a much larger space. With the new regulation, the air has to go insideSo they can’t play with the brakes to use this heat coming out of them to get a certain temperature level in the tire. That is a completely different situation than the one we had in 2021, “closed Isola.