Formula 1 has done it again. After weeks of waiting for the announced rule change intended to fix the poor product they’ve offered in the first three races, the result is very unsatisfactory. Yes, small changes have been made, but merely decorative adjustments that will disappoint the average fan when the Miami Grand Prix arrives.
That is, in exchange for making some useless tweaks that won’t solve much, the FIA has changed the one thing that was giving this Formula 1 a touch of excitement. A lifeline for the cars that perform poorly that will be a blessing for Mercedes, who won’t even have to battle in the opening laps. Toto Wolff must be laughing out loud in his mansion.
Mercedes won’t even have to fight in the opening laps of the race
After weeks of supposed meetings, the tweaks the FIA has made to the technical regulations could not be more disappointing. For qualifying, they reduced energy recovery from 8 to 7 megajoules, literally something they had already done in Melbourne and Suzuka, with no major changes.
Additionally, they have increased the power of the superclipping from 250 kW to 350 kW. What does that mean in plain language? That the cars will continue to lose straight-line speed in qualifying laps, but the difference is that now they will lose more speed for a shorter period. For example, instead of dropping from 320 to 250 in 3 seconds they will do so in only one and a half seconds.
Looking at the race, the main point is that they have capped the Boost at 150 kW. In other words, the extra energy the driver will have will be less than before. Up to this point, this is all they have modified in an attempt to fix what really mattered, the spectacle on track. Unanimous changes that have had a painful trade-off.
And to approve these three superfluous measures the FIA has also given the green light to a rescue for Mercedes. Specifically, to its great weak point, the starts. Formula 1 will implement a system to detect poor starts that will activate electrical energy when it detects that a car is starting slowly.
Not only is it easy to guess that teams will use it as soon as possible to do harm, but it is directly a stab in the heart of the little excitement this Formula 1 had. Because if Mercedes suffered in anything, it was at the starts, always losing positions to Ferrari and even to McLaren, and making races much more complicated.
This system will be tested in Miami and if it works it will start to be used in races from Canada. Brace yourselves, because the FIA may have managed to make Formula 1 even more boring.
Images | Formula 1, Mercedes
