The Formula One season starts in Melbourne next week, but teams already have their sights set firmly on next year and a rules revolution.
The big question most face is when to stop developing the shiny new cars that have yet to turn a wheel in competitive action, and throw time and resources at the next generation instead.
Get it right and a midfield team can hope to make the sort of big gains next year that are out of reach when rules are stable.
Photo: Reuters
For top teams, the consequences of getting it wrong can be dramatic and this is the last opportunity to throw cash at development before a budget cap comes in.
The likes of Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull have been working on next year for some time, but they also want to win titles before then.
“This year’s championship is a two-year championship,” Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff said. “There’s such a massive regulatory change for 2021 that balancing your allocation of resource will be crucial... If you get it wrong and you’re months behind, you might be half-a-second behind.”
Next year’s regulations represent one of the biggest revamps in the sport, with revised aerodynamics and bigger wheels and tires.
Mercedes have won the past six constructors’ and drivers’ championships, an era that started in 2014 when 1.6 liter V6 turbo hybrid power units replaced the old 2.4 liter V8s. Until that point, Red Bull had won four in a row.
In 2009, it was Brawn GP who took advantage of a rule change with a “double-diffuser” that resulted in six wins in the first seven races for Britain’s Jenson Button and ultimately both titles.
The car was a result of underperforming Honda effectively writing off a season to focus on the year after, even if the Japanese manufacturer left the sport abruptly at the end of 2008 during the global financial crisis.
The team rose from the embers under Ross Brawn with the Honda chassis married to a Mercedes engine and the rest was history.
Brawn, a former Benetton and Ferrari technical director who sold his team to Mercedes after the extraordinary double-title year, made the most of changing regulations several times in his career.
“I’ve had years when I’ve literally said from the beginning: ‘Let’s just run this car [with minimal development] because there are big opportunities next year,’” the Formula One managing director of motorsports told reporters. “I think it depends where you feel you are on the competitive ladder.”
At Benetton in 1993, with a young Michael Schumacher on board, Brawn told chief designer Rory Byrne early on to forget about that year’s car and focus on the 1994 one.
Schumacher won the first of his record seven titles in 1994, with Benetton going from a distant third overall in 1993 to runners-up and then champions in 1995.
“New regulations, new opportunities... Rory just focused totally on ’94 and that resulted in a world championship. So if you’re prepared to make that sacrifice and you’ve got the resources, it can pay off,” Brawn said.
In 2009, Brawn GP also benefited from the previous year’s season-long battle between McLaren and Ferrari that went down to the wire.
“They undoubtedly didn’t put the resources into the next year’s car that we did. So you can see it from both sides,” Brawn said. “It’s for a team to judge, but the opportunity is there.”
Racing Point, under the ownership of Canadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll, have copied last year’s title-winning Mercedes for this season and are to limit upgrades as they focus on next year and a new start as Aston Martin.
Former champions Williams, last with just one point last season, are in a tougher position, as future gains have to be balanced against the reputational damage of another failed year.
“We have to keep developing the FW43 throughout the course of this year, because this is a critical year for our team,” deputy principal Claire Williams said. “We know the budget, the resource capacity that we have, and we’ve just got to make sure that we can do the best job that we can with that, running two programs in parallel. It’s not ideal.”
A seven-year-old horse had to be euthanized on Friday after breaking its back on the final fence of a Grand National steeplechase race that it won despite sustaining the serious injury. It follows the death of four horses at the Cheltenham Festival last month — including one after the prestigious Gold Cup. Gold Dancer was competing in the Mildmay Novices’ Chase during Ladies Day at Aintree’s Grand National Festival. The horse managed to cross the finish line approximately four lengths ahead of runner-up Regent’s Stroll. “The winner of our second race of the day, Gold Dancer, was pulled up after
Hans Niemann declares he would become a “stone cold killer” in a Netflix documentary released on Tuesday about his feud with five-time classical world champion Magnus Carlsen, a pledge that injects new edge into the lingering fallout from the cheating scandal that shook elite chess. “I’m gonna be a stone cold killer the rest of my life,” the US’ Niemann says in the film. “I’m going to become the best player in the world, and no one is going to believe that now, but this clip will play over and over again in 10 years — just wait.” “I just
The Daredevils yesterday took eight catches in the final as they eked out a victory in the Taiwan Cricket Triangular Tournament against PCCT at Yingfeng Cricket Ground in Taipei’s Songshan District. PCCT’s batting lineup collapsed after they asked the Daredevils to bowl in the T20 decider of the weekend tournament that also involved the Formosa Cricket Club. PCCT were bundled out for 76 in 16.2 overs against a disciplined Daredevils attack. Shahzad Khan was the top scorer in the innings with 21, but he was among those who offered chances to the fielders. Shane Ferreira and Jason Cameron took three wickets each, with
OBJECTIVE REACHED: ’Now for us, it’s about getting healthy, making sure everybody is ready to go, and we can ramp up,’ the Atlanta Hawks’ C.J. McCollum said after the game The Atlanta Hawks on Friday secured an NBA playoff berth with a 124-102 victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers as the Boston Celtics locked up the Eastern Conference second seed with a lopsided win of their own. C.J. McCollum scored a game-high 29 points for the Hawks, who came into the contest at sixth in the East and still in danger of falling into the play-in tournament that would see the seventh-through 10th-placed teams battle for the last two playoff berths in each conference. Nickeil Alexander-Walker and Jalen Johnson scored 18 points apiece, and Dyson Daniels added a triple-double of 13
RSS