Fernando Alonso, Aston Martin, Yas Marina, 2022 post-season test

New rules ‘have not yet achieved the result Formula 1 intended’ – Alonso

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In the round-up: Aston Martin-bound Fernando Alonso remains disappointed how few teams can win in F1 despite rule changes

In brief

Alonso unhappy how 2022 rules did not close F1 midfield’s gap to top

Fernando Alonso says he was disappointed the revised technical regulations introduced for 2022 did not do more to close the field up.

“It was a bit disappointing for everyone to realise that things haven’t changed dramatically,” he told Auto Motor und Sport. “There are at most two teams that can win races, as has been the case in recent years.

“The gap between the two or three top teams and the midfield is still too big. In 50% of the races we are one lap behind the winner. Therefore, we have not yet achieved the result that Formula 1 intended with the restart of the rules.”

Red Bull won 17 of the 22 races held this year. Ferrari’s four wins all came in the first half of the season, while Mercedes’ single victory was all that prevented Red Bull from sweeping the second half.

Blakeley crowned F1 Esports champion

McLaren Shadow’s Lucas Blakeley was crowned 2022 F1 Esports Series Pro Champion after the 12th and final round of the season at Yas Marina Circuit.

Blakeley, who took four race victories over the course of his fourth season in the championship and first with McLaren, finished fourth as the finale to secure his first title, on top of McLaren sealing the teams’ championship.

Red Bull’s championship contender Frederik Rasmussen won the final race ahead of Haas’s Thomas Ronhaar. Pole winner Josh Idowu completed the podium in third, with Blakeley crossing the line in fourth to secure the title.

F1 Manager game launches driver database

The F1 Manager 2022 game has added a new online driver database which includes every single driver who has raced in F1, Formula 2 and the FIA Formula 3 championship this year.

The F1 driver ratings remain unchanged from the game’s launch. Game developer Frontier said adding the database means “players can identify future stars of the sport or compare individual ratings to maximise the opportunity for points.

“All ratings in the driver database are reflective of those at the start of a new game in F1 Manager 2022 and develop throughout a driver’s career as they earn experience from completing sessions on track. This allows aspiring team principals to make an informed decision on their dream driver line-ups from the start of their career, though they’ll still need to use scouts to discover the driver’s interest in joining the team and gain information on their current contract.

“Once they’ve done their research, they can step into the [game’s] paddock themselves and take their team to the top step of the podium as they compete for glory in the world’s most prestigious motorsport.”

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Comment of the day

Our driver rankings for the 2022 F1 season continue into the top ten, with Red Bull’s Sergio Perez netting ninth place after finishing third in the championship. Was it a fair placing?

He had easily the fastest car on the grid, sometimes by a significant margin and yet at times was struggling to finish above cars two to five tenths slower per lap. I’d be slightly torn whether he was better than Sainz but I think the fewer accidents probably mean he did pip him.
Slowmo

Happy birthday!

Happy birthday to Daniel Hayes, Kate and Bradaus!

On this day in motorsport

  • 40 years ago today Teddy Mayer and Tyler Alexander left McLaren as Ron Dennis completed his takeover of the team

Author information

Ida Wood
Often found in junior single-seater paddocks around Europe doing journalism and television commentary, or dabbling in teaching photography back in the UK. Currently based...

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15 comments on “New rules ‘have not yet achieved the result Formula 1 intended’ – Alonso”

  1. Alonso’s right. I think racing is closer, but the fact that nobody can really overtake without DRS assistance shows that it’s simply not good enough. We needed rules that allowed F1 to steer away from DRS, and that’s has not been achieved

    1. @smartez His point is about field tightness rather than racing quality & overtaking, but true to some extent.

  2. True, while racing quality may have improved, the gaps from midfield to top still exist, but hopefully, over time, upper midfield teams could also win on merit.

    I fully share COTD’s view.

    1. I like the new cars and am fully supportive of the cost cap but I agree the gap from midfield to front runners is still too big. I think it’ll close over the next few years though.

      The idea that a change of rules would bring everyone closer is a fallacy. Even in 2009, when there was a proper shake-up, it was really that 2 well funded teams prioritised the rule change and those fighting for the title focused on the wrong area. By 2022, those same teams were not likely to fall into the known trap and Ferrari had had a poor season prior which allowed an early switch.

      Personally, I think the rules will come good – but wet weather running and DRS passes still concern me. However I understand why the sport didn’t want a 2012 style tyre to add further gimmicks – liberty can’t afford to further alienate the traditionalists.

      1. @rbalonso Ferrari and McLaren didn’t so much made the wrong call for 2009 as they played by the intent of the rules, then got caught out by Brawn, Toyota (and I think Williams?) showing up with a double diffuser that the FIA decided to allow – something Adrian Newey claimed was in large part a political move by the then FIA president Max Mosley, who saw it as a means to hurt the FOTA group that had caused the FIA so much trouble, and which had effectively been led by Ferrari and McLaren. Towards the end of the year, both McLaren and Ferrari had won and might have been competitive in points had they not had Kovalainen and Badoer/Fisichella in their second cars.

  3. The new cars have been a step forward but not the monumental, revolutionary step that we were teased by the FIA and Liberty. I don’t mind a long-term plan to close the gaps between the teams but that plan needs to be marketed as such if that is the case.

  4. Alonso is right, but for the wrong reasons. The new regulations have indeed failed to achieve better racing that isn’t dependent on Mario Kart gimmicks. However, the cost cap is not so much about performance as it is about enticing new entries from big manufacturers (which is what FOM and the FIA love as it brings in more money). The FIA was spooked after the collapse of LMP1 and the failure of the V6-era rules to bring in new teams. The budget gap as is, is still far too high and all the exceptions made to it for additional spending show that the point was never to actually limit spending all that much.

    1. the cost cap […] is about enticing new entries from big manufacturers (which is what FOM and the FIA love as it brings in more money)

      I don’t buy this argument given the sports reluctance to allow new entries. Audi and Porsche were looking at partnerships/buyouts, not at fielding a new entry. The budget cap is very much about keeping existing teams in the sport and is arguably the most significant introduction to F1 in decades, more than hybrid powertrains or the reintroduction of ground effects. For those who have been around the sport since 2008 the memory of how quickly large manufacturers can leave is still engrained. A Toyota, Honda, BMW, etc. can pivot their technical resources from motor racing to their road car division, a “private” team not so much.

      1. F1 has indeed rejected new private teams, but when manufacturers tested the waters they were more than happy to rewrite the rules to get them back in. After losing Toyota, BMW, Honda, and earlier on Ford/Jaguar, F1 wanted to get the manufacturers back by going all-in on the then marketing-friendly hybrid engines. They were never going to stick to the promises made to the little guys at Virgin/HRT/Lotus about some vague ‘upcoming’ budget cap.

        However, the F1 hybrid engines didn’t impress the big manufacturers, and perhaps worse for F1, a lot of them instead focused more on all electric battery cars (BEV). ACEA reported that sales of plug-in hybrids (PHEV) fell below 10% of the total in Q3 across the EU. They count HEV cars as ‘hybrid electric’ (at 22% market share), but that’s a rather charitable naming scheme considering how those small batteries are charged.

        The problem for F1 is obvious; F1 cannot race with electric power. There simply is no way at present to generate and/or carry the energy needed to race that fast for that long. The 2026 rules seem to reflect that. F1 is no longer trying to be about highly complex hybrid engines, and the rules are so prescriptive that some engine-aficionados are calling them ‘spec in name’. That might be a tad hyperbolic, but in an increasingly electric world F1 can’t bet on being an engine formula. Like IMSA showed the ACO, and is perhaps now showing F1, it’s probably better to let manufacturers put their own style and logo on an otherwise fairly simple and evenly matched package.

        1. Michael, good point re electric power. I suppose one option is to go to 100% renewable ethanol as a fuel (yes, I know all the arguments about it not really being that green, but it is one possible path), or they go for a much more hybrid engine design, allow unlimited use of KERS-type systems etc, but even then it probably only extends the life of an ICU formula for a relatively short period. Sooner or later, ICU’s will just be prohibited by governments, no matter what F1 thinks. Maybe a future all-electric F1 will have cars with modular battery packs which are replaceable in seconds, much as wheels are today, so that F1 will have “refuelling” pit stops. Or maybe the hidden agenda with sprint races is to convnce fans that a sprint format is better than the traditional format, and F1 weekends will become two or three sprint races within the range of a battery.

        2. MichaelN, is it necessarily that realistic to mix HRT, Virgin/Marussia/Manor and Caterham in with the hybrid engine changes when those three teams were introduced in 2010?

          Those teams weren’t really related to the hybrid engine discussions – the purpose of introducing those teams was part of Mosely’s tactics to impose cost cutting measures on the teams around 2009 and 2010 by threatening to introduce a group of teams that would, because of the favourable technical regulations, be expected to follow the political line of the FIA and thus allow the FIA to force technical changes through by ensuring that they would always have enough votes to win votes on technical discussions.

          Yes, the FIA did then backtrack on the promises they made to those teams, but it wasn’t related to the hybrid engines and the changes that were being forced through were not necessarily that popular with the manufacturer teams either. The goal that Mosely achieved was to get the teams to sign up to a new Resource Restriction Agreement (RRA) which ran from 2010 to 2017 and which imposed restrictions on spending (for example, cutting the amount that could be spent on eternal consultants by €10 million, introducing new limits on staff numbers and limiting the number of personnel who could attend race weekends, as well as extending the limits on wind tunnel, CFD and track testing that were already partially in place).

  5. Suffering Williams Fan
    17th December 2022, 15:03

    I think the rule changes this season were great. I think racing amongst cars on similar levels (or sometimes faster cars out of position) was far better this year than has been the case for many years. We saw plenty of close racing and on-track overtakes through much of the season – not all tracks, granted, but many. On that basis, the concept change to reduce the impact of aero on following cars seems to have had the desired effect. As for closing up the field, it remains to be seen if the cost cap and various “success penalties” will work in the long run to tighten things up (I think it will take several seasons before that’s clear), but short of a spec series (no thanks), I don’t see why people would expect regulation changes would close the field up.

  6. The rules worked, cars can follow closely.

    That most teams cannot make a decent car is something different. It’s still heavily aerodependant. Even the cost cap doesn’t destroy brainpower of existing operations.

    It should be easier to close the gap now. F1 isn’t a spec series.

  7. Unreliability, as often happens after a spec’ change, and other events help to increase the number of overtakes.

    Drivers waiting for DRS overtakes, or stuck in DRS trains, remained.

    Dominant teams.

    Meet the new Boss. Same as the old boss.

  8. Thanks for the birthday shout out! My 40th. Present from my wife: tickets for the British GP!

Comments are closed.