F1 SHOW GOES ON – BUT TO A DIFFERENT SCRIPT

SO LOUD HAS been the chatter around that ending to the 2021 season, you’d be forgiven for forgetting that the Formula 1 cars back on track this weekend are the result of the biggest shift in regulations in decades (p52).

The return of ground-effect aerodynamics is the headline change to cars that are larger, heavier and harder to handle. They have been developed to reduced, cost-capped budgets with less wind tunnel time and will compete over 22 shortened race weekends.

Only the complex V6 hybrid powertrains are really carried over from before in a new rule book written to bunch up the pack and allow for closer running and more overtaking.

Ironically, the regulations come at a time when the on-track action is as close as it’s been in a generation, and in the short to medium term, the pack could even spread out again, depending on who has read the new rule book with the keenest eye, before eventually (hopefully) having the desired impact.

F1 bosses will be relieved to finally get a chance to shift the narrative away from the stewards’ room and back to what happens on track. While the bad taste lingers, the show must – and always does – go on. F1 and sport in general knows no other way, whatever may have been swept under the carpet.