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BRAVE NEW WORLD In 2021 Formula 1 will change dramatically as new regulations usher in a new era of improved on-track battling and closer competition among teams. Formula 1 CEO Chase Carey and FIA President Jean Todt explain why the new rules are a major step towards ensuring the future success of motor sport’s top class, while AUTO look at the key changes contained in the new rules
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JUSTIN HYNES
Changes to the 2021 F1 regulations led by the FIA and the sport’s management should produce fairer, more costeffective racing.
Halloween 2019, and in a packed press conference room at the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas, Formula 1 reached a watershed moment. After more than two years of intense research and development and broad consultation with a cross section of the sport’s major stakeholders, including teams, drivers, suppliers, sponsors, media and fans, the most radical changes to how the world’s top motor sport championship would go racing were revealed. Encompassing radical changes to how Formula 1 cars are built, as well as alterations to how teams race across grand prix weekends, the new rules have been designed to improve the on-track action by allowing drivers to push harder, follow rivals more closely and attack more successfully, and to achieve closer competition across the grid through restrictions on costly development for little gain and through the development of a cost caps – a ground-breaking move for a sport in which spending power has often been the major differentiator. The detail of each set of regulations is dealt with elsewhere on these pages, but For Formula 1 CEO and Executive Chairman Chase Carey the full suit of 2021 rules presented in Austin represent a major step forward in the evolution of the sport.