Last year represented a seismic change for Formula 1 and its approach to car design. The return of a ground-effects formula and all its trimmings was conceived to make the on-track product better for fans, at the expense of restricting overall freedom for the aerodynamicist to exploit.
After a close-run 2021 season, however, 2022 was largely one-way traffic in the championship stakes as Red Bull understood the new rules best. The RB18 gave Max Verstappen the ammunition to sweep to the title largely unchallenged, prompting questions as to why the FIA and F1 had bothered to change things up. But now that the engineers have a year’s worth of experience with the new rules, convergence will surely start to close the field.
That’s not to say that the rules are exactly the same. Last season threw up a few curveballs as a consequence of the new regulations, particularly porpoising and bouncing in the early part of the season as the greater levels of underbody downforce upset the
