Formula 1 reaches a make-or-break seven days for 2017's overhaul
Saturday 23 April 2016 11:18, UK
After nearly a year in the making, Formula 1’s proposed rules makeover for faster, more dynamic cars from 2017 has reached a critical seven days.
April 30 is the deadline by which regulations concerning design, tyres and engines must be agreed if they are to come into force in time for next season.
So, entering a key few days for F1's future, how does the situation stand and what is 2017 shaping up to look like?
Why is the next week make-or-break for 2017?
Having been pushed back from an original March 1 deadline, April 30 is now the final point at which the Sporting and Technical Regulations for 2017 must be finalised.
The Strategy Group and F1 Commission are meeting on Tuesday to thrash out the final details, with hope that the plans will not be derailed at the final moment.
What were the original plans?
In May last year, the FIA announced the Strategy Group had agreed on the need to make F1 more spectacular from 2017.
The intention was to make cars between five and six seconds faster a lap, with the regulations to be overhauled to also ensure the challengers possessed "more aggressive looks".
So what will the cars look like?
In what is possibly the first time F1 has made aesthetics a central pillar of future regulations, 2017's cars are set to look more "aggressive" thanks to regulations to make them wider, heavier and run on fatter tyres. Wings will also be wider, with the rear wing lower than is currently the case.
Bodywork dimensions were published in February and teams are already working to this blueprint in early development work at their factories.
"The cars are pretty good looking," Williams' chief technical officer Pat Symonds told Sky Sports F1.
"We are running ours in the wind tunnel this week and it looks like a proper racing car. It's got very big rear tyres on it and it doesn't look retro, which is a thing I was worried about.
"The front wing is swept back a little bit, as are the sidepods, and the rear-wing endplates slope backwards. It almost gives an impression of the car moving when it's standing still, so it does look good."
How much faster will the cars be?
Although the original intention was to bring lap times down by up to six seconds, more moderate gains around the four-second mark are now expected from the new rules themselves.
"Personally, I could never understand why we would want to do that," said Symonds of the six-second target.
"It doesn't do anything per se. When we run the cars with 100kg of fuel in, they are nearly five seconds slower than they might be in qualifying trim. So I don't think the actual lap time really matters much."
In any case, the natural rate of F1 development already means the current 2016 cars are even faster than last year's. At the Bahrain GP, Lewis Hamilton's pole position time was three seconds under 2015's benchmark and, despite the smaller-capacity V6 engines, was the quickest-ever lap seen at the venue.
According to Mercedes' Toto Wolff, the 2017 cars "will be more difficult to drive" and "deploy much more G on the driver like in the past".
Will overtaking improve?
Here is the rub of the 2017 overhaul.
While the decrease in lap times and increase in downforce is likely to make the cars more challenging for drivers, few believe the changes will do anything to alleviate F1's overtaking issues - and some fear the age-old problem of cars being able to follow each other closely will only get worse.
"The car is a bit quicker - not stunningly quicker, but they will be a bit quicker - but I don't think there's anything there that's going to improve the racing, unfortunately," says Symonds.
"The truism is that the more downforce you've got on the car the more you're going to be affected by the wake of another car. And the 2017 cars do have a bit more downforce, so I do think they're going to be affected more than the current cars.
"I certainly hope we haven't made things significantly worse, but I'm sure we haven't made them better. And I sort of doubt that are the same.
Drivers have voiced similar fears, with Lewis Hamilton perhaps putting it most starkly: "I think we need more mechanical grip and less aero wake coming off the back of the cars so we can get close and overtake. Give us five seconds' worth of lap time from aero and nothing will change - we'll just be driving faster."
What is happening with engines?
Despite some high-profile and persistent opposition to the V6 hybrids since their 2014 introduction - most notably from Bernie Ecclestone - the technology is set to remain in place until 2020.
But the manufacturers are set to cede ground where it comes to customer costs and the guarantee of supply. The FIA has pushed for the fees customer teams pay for their engines to come down to €12m by 2018 at the latest and the manufacturers say they are on course to deliver that.
"We've offered much cheaper engines and actually met the targets we set ourselves," Mercedes' Toto Wolff told Sky F1. "We have structured an obligation to supply - which we don't like particularly, but we have offered it to not run into a Red Bull situation again - and all that is on paper."
Manufacturers were also tasked with addressing issues of "performance convergence" to ensure there is a smaller disparity between the four power units in use on the grid.
Will they be louder?
Complaints from fans, and some drivers, over the quieter noise generated by the V6 engines has lingered for two years now and the FIA remain keen for the sport's soundtrack to be pumped up.
"We are working on various concepts and have made it one of the key points in order to find solutions," stressed Wolff, with Mercedes' commitment to finding improvements underlined by the fact they are currently advertising for a 'noise engineer' to join their engine division in Brixworth.
Would-be candidates need to be ready for the "challenging task of improving the turbo hybrid V6 noise appeal without sacrificing power unit or vehicle performance".
What's the plan for tyres?
With Formula 1 intent on increasing downforce, plans have long been in place to make the tyres wider to increase mechanical grip.
The front tyres will be a 305mm-wide thread rather than the current 245mm, while rear tyres will be increased to a 405mm-wide thread from 325mm.
As seen by this season, strategy on rubber can have a huge say on racing and tyres are to be a major component in the 2017 changes. However, it was only this week that Pirelli were granted extra tyre testing.
The Italian manufacturer will be afforded 25 'car days' to test the new tyres in 2016, 2017 and 2018 using current cars. As the 2017 cars step up in downforce, Pirelli must make sure the tyres can cope with the higher than usual pressures.
Pirelli motorsport director Paul Hembery told Sky F1 in Shanghai: "The tyres are going to be quite different. We are moving towards a much larger thermal zone than we have now. You hear the drivers saying 'We want to push on', so they will be able to. There will be much less degradation and a different type of performance."
And what about head protection?
Following growing pressure from drivers, the FIA has set the target of introducing some form of cockpit protection from next season. The Mercedes-devised 'halo' has long been considered the front-running concept and was briefly tested by Ferrari for the first time during pre-season testing at Barcelona.
However, Red Bull have simultaneously developed an alternative canopy design - which they believe is a more refined solution. The team were planning to complete static tests of it this week before a potential trial on the RB12 in first practice in Russia.
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