Are F1’s new rules working?

LONDON. - Have Formula 1’s new rules worked so far this year?

McLaren driver Lando Norris certainly thinks so.

“It’s 100 percent better,” Norris said after finishing third in Sunday’s Emilia Romagna Grand Prix. It’s what they intended to do and the reasons for the changes are working. I think you have been seeing better races this year than for many years.” But hang on. Not so fast, Lando.

Better racing was indeed the aim of the sweeping rule changes that were introduced this year but commercial rights holder Formula 1 and governing body the FIA were specific about what they were trying to achieve.

The aim was to enable the cars to follow each other more closely, to close up the field from front to back so more teams were contesting for wins, and to allow the drivers to push much closer to flat-out for much more of the time.

As F1 managing director Ross Brawn put it before the start of the season:

“I am confident these rules will lead to much better racing. I am convinced these cars will be closer in performance from the very beginning.

“I honestly don’t think the regulations will change the general order of things dramatically. I think it will bring it a lot closer and I think we will see some of what were the midfield teams challenging. We’ll have a bigger group of competitive teams.”

Has the sport succeeded? As world champion Max Verstappen puts it: “I do think that the cars are better to follow. At least you don’t have these weird moments anymore of like, big oversteer, big understeer.

“When you get within a second, it’s (still) hard to follow because of our cornering speed in a Formula 1 car. That will always be like that. But, yeah, I do feel it’s a bit nicer.”

Alpha Tauri’s Pierre Gasly adds: “I do feel it is an improvement compared to last year on all aspects. So I’m pretty happy so far with what we’ve seen. I do believe we can race closer to each other.

“It’s clearly a step in the right direction. I must say it has been more enjoyable, closer racing, more battles. I think the targets were matched.”

On this front, the wholesale change to the way the cars’ aerodynamics work, to ensure that a car following closely behind has its airflow less disrupted and can stay significantly closer to a car in front, has worked.