Sergio Perez and Carlos Sainz Jnr admit dirty air could become more of a concern in Jeddah and across the rest of the 2024 season.
The sport introduced radical new ground effect aerodynamic concepts for the 2022 season in a bid to promote closer racing due to the ‘dirty air’ effect.The turbulent air generated by a leading car affects those chasing it. This effect was supposed to be lessened by new technical regulations introduced in 2022 which reintroduced ‘ground effect’ aerodynamics.
However, the opening race of the 2024 season in Bahrain featured little racing towards the front after the early laps. Max Verstappenwon comfortably from pole, with Red Bull team mate Perez finishing around 20 seconds behind in second, chased by Sainz in third. Sainz finished three seconds behind Perez and claims he struggled to get much closer because of the affect of dirty air.
“I was in a bit of an uncomfortable position, because you’re there in the two, three-second margin, which is where you get all the dirty air, but you don’t get the advantage of the DRS and the slipstream, so you’re just sliding a bit more,” Sainz explained.
“If I would have been within a second or maybe five seconds behind, I think on the hard tyre I could have maybe showed a bit more the true pace of the car and my pace. But in that two, three seconds is the worst place to be and I could never mount any proper challenge on Checo.”
Perez expects it will prove harder for drivers to follow closely to rivals this season than it has over the last two seasons, especially once they’ve fallen out of DRS range.
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“I saw Carlos, he lost DRS early on and he was just out of contention for a while,” Perez said. “The car ahead going straight into the clean air, is basically going on his own, has to use more of his tyres, so it’s a bit of a disadvantage if you are fighting.
“I think, in places like Baku or even Jeddah… I think the racing is going to be different. It does create a difference to the car ahead in the first few laps. So, it’s going to be interesting, I think.”
F1 has changed its DRS rules for this year, allowing drivers to use it a lap earlier than last year in grands prix, in order to increase overtaking.
Perez believes drivers will have to weigh whether they want to push harder on their tyres to keep within DRS of rivals or back off slightly to prioritise preserving their tyres over a stint.
“I think a lot of strategy comes into play, especially with how sensitive the tyres are to pushing,” he said.
“On one side, you want to push to get out of the DRS or to get into the DRS. And then on the other hand, you want to save tyres because we all know how sensitive the tyres are in the first few laps to pushing. So it’s a very fine line.
“As soon as I saw I didn’t have pressure from behind, I decided to manage my tyres and it paid off instead of getting into the DRS battle – so then I could overtake them, no problem. It’s going to be track-dependent. It’s going to be, I think, a very tricky season going 24 races like that. We had [the new rule] in the sprints last year – it’s going to be a challenge.”
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Jere (@jerejj)
6th March 2024, 13:54
& They’re probably right, given following was more difficult last season versus 2022, so naturally, this season should be more difficult versus last season in this regard, although while the Bahrain GP was untypically straightforward for the circuit’s standards, no one still really seemed to have following difficulties but I guess this is largely because BIC configuration has historically been racing-friendly, so more aero-dependent circuits should expose the matter more profoundly.
DRS becoming available a lap sooner ultimately didn’t increase overtaking based on the sole example thus far & I doubt the other races will be any different.
MichaelN
6th March 2024, 14:12
Ross Brawn and Liberty promised that the 2022 platform would evolve and be adjusted as teams got closer to its limits, but this problem already appeared in late 2022, got worse in 2023, and again in 2024 without any intervention.
SadF1fan
6th March 2024, 15:14
The FIA should have never bend for Toto’s lobby and harassment over the porpoising.
The raising for the floor edge was a capital mistake that completely undermined the idea of this technical era.
On top of that it hampered what competition Ferrari had to offer. And furthermore it didn’t solve Mercedes’ porpoising issues or competitiveness, their car is still bouncing and still slow.
PeterG
6th March 2024, 15:58
This was always going to happen because unless you have a completely spec ruleset that prevents teams from doing anything to the spec design you are always going to get teams coming up with ways to claw back downforce by not only evolving the areas that were left open to them but also finding things like loop holes to do things that weren’t expected by the FIA.
They could outlaw all of the things teams have found since 2022 which makes following harder and within a few months (If that) teams will have already found ways to counteract those losses. It’s just what F1 is, Always has been & always will/should be.
Same will happen in 2026. They will have probably an even more restrictive set of regulations as well as all this active aero stuff and they will go on and on about how close the field is, How close cars can follow and how we have a million passes as a result and by year 2 we will be back where they were before.
MichaelN
6th March 2024, 21:42
Maybe, but they’re not even trying. And they said they would.
Alesici
6th March 2024, 16:23
They need new regulations to bring back sliding skirts running down the sides of the floor to prevent turbulence from breaking up the vortices the teams use to seal the floor in clean flow. Skirts will seal the floor irrespective of flow conditions.
Someone should run a small series of one-make races between McMurtry Spéirling electric fan cars to understand the practicality of adding fans underneath racing cars to generate downforce. Fans will produce downforce irrespective of flow conditions. Particularly when combined with skirts.
They need to replace the cheese tyre manufacturer. Obviously.
They should add front flick-ups in front of the rear tyres and pods behind them. Both features will reduce the turbulence from the tyres.
If made strong, the rear tyre pods can also protect against cars being launched into the sky when they make contact (this is often caused by the rear of the grippy tyres constantly travelling upwards at 200mph.)
And they should invite teams to enter (if anyone is mad enough to want to join them).
Ben (@scuderia29)
6th March 2024, 16:48
I think enough time has passed where I can confidently call the major 2022 rule changes a big failure
AntonioCorleone
6th March 2024, 22:14
It’s fair to say that Max isn’t worried at all.