Formula 1 Director of Motorsports Ross Brawn says the championship will step up proposals for its planned 2021 regulatory overhaul if 2019 tweaks do not pan out as expected.
Formula 1 has revised aerodynamic regulations for next season, primarily targeted at reducing wake from the front wing, in a bid to allow drivers to follow each other more closely.
It is hoped that such a move will enhance the quality and quantity of racing, though some teams reckon the change will have minimal impact, with designers reportedly able to recoup the lost downforce.
Formula 1 revealed a handful of 2021 concepts earlier this year and Brawn says series chiefs are willing to be reactive if the 2019 regulations do not deliver the desired progress.
“What we learn from this aero programme will be very important for the next bigger step, in 2021,” Brawn said in an interview with the official F1 website.
“The point to stress is it’s a philosophy and a culture, not just a one-stop solution.
“If we don’t achieve everything we want to achieve with these changes, we’ll learn from it, press on and carry on with the next phase of changes.
“We’ll keep doing that until we get the cars in a form when they can race each other much more effectively, which they can’t at the moment.
“It’s useful to see if the teams have been able to evolve and take different directions because we don’t want to discover that in 2021.”
Brawn is nonetheless optimistic that the impact of ‘dirty air’ will be lessened when the 2019 cars are introduced.
“Until the cars run, we don’t know what solutions they have made, but from predictions, we’re achieving about 20 per cent improvement,” says Brawn on the changes.
“So we’re about a quarter of the way there to where we think we could be. But it’s not a one-stop shop in the sense that you do this and then you don’t touch it anymore.”
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