Brawn's warning to himself on F1's new rules

Momentum is building towards Formula 1's next rules revolution in 2021, with Ross Brawn giving a sneak preview of the blueprint that will be unveiled in Bahrain later this week by revealing that mitigating the 'force field' of turbulent air that makes it so hard for cars to follow is high on the agenda.

It's a laudable and necessary objective but, in isolation, is not something that will make the racing significantly better. Let's hope Brawn has heeded his own warning from the past, and still recognises a weakness in himself that, if not overcome, will mean the overhaul he is charged with overseeing will not succeed.

To do so, Brawn must cast his mind back to one of F1's earlier, failed attempts to spice up the show. This sends us back to 2007, when Charlie Whiting formed the Overtaking Working Group to create regulations to improve the racing, resulting in the skinny aerodynamic rules of the '09 season.

The objectives were simple: to cut downforce by 50% (albeit with an acceptance teams would claw some of that back), to make cars less susceptible to the turbulence that was reckoned to cost 20-30% of downforce when following in a quicker corner. This would therefore reduce the required pace difference between a chasing car and its prey needed to make a pass.

The teams therefore cut back the sidepods to exploit unregulated areas to add aerodynamic components, the double diffuser was created and the downforce was clawed back at a surprising rate. The law of unintended consequences was in full swing, and soon we had the return of exhaust-blown downforce.

And the difference in terms of overtaking from 2008 to '09? Negligible.

Nobody could argue Brawn lacks the experience, intellect and credibility to head up this process but while poacher-turned-gamekeeper is a snappy phrase it belies the fact that setting the rules and attacking them with a well-funded team behind you are a very different challenge. And he will know that all too well.

Brawn was among the technical bosses interviewed for a series of Autosport articles on the 2009-'13 regulations. A look back at his verdict on the '09 rules from almost five years ago contains the warning he must heed.

"I don't think they were terribly effective purely from the aerodynamic perspective," he said. "I didn't get a feeling that the rule changes had suddenly made the cars easier to follow through corners etc.

"The problem is that we all are a bit shy in making draconian changes" Ross Brawn

"There may have been a little bit of an improvement, but not significant enough to really notice in terms of the race. Obviously the DRS came in later and had a fairly major effect on that.

"The problem is that we all - and I'm just as guilty - are a bit shy in making draconian changes. But we actually do need to make a draconian change because our engineers collectively are all so innovative and clever that if you say we're going to make a 50% reduction in downforce, you do something that would make that difference on one day but six months down the line becomes a 20% reduction.

"We never really bite the bullet. What we needed was a 75% reduction in downforce, which eventually would end up as 50%. Then we might see some change. The rules did do a reasonable job of maintaining or pushing back laptimes, but I don't honestly believe it changed the nature of the racing. And that was one of the objectives when the rules were changed."

In the 2009 case, F1 really did deliver on the specific objective. The downforce was cut, but it did not achieve the desired outcome of improving the racing. Strangely enough, F1 is actually pretty good at hitting the detail of its objectives, but extremely bad at the reasoning underpinning those.

The 2017 regulations are another example. It was decided that the solution to all of F1's ills was to improve lap times by four-to-five seconds compared to 2015, resulting in a ludicrous but single-minded determination to achieve this. The result was cars that, based on a comparison of the fastest individual lap set at each circuit in '15 and '17, were as near as makes no difference bang on 4.5s.

By doing that, F1 won the battle and lost the war. Aerodynamics became more complicated (reversing what had happened in 2009), following another car closely became even harder, and to the surprise of nobody faster cars did not equal better racing. The decision making process had failed catastrophically, even though the rules themselves did deliver on the specific aim.

Brawn's verdict on the 2009 regulations demonstrates two key things. First, he understands delivering on a specific objective is pointless if you aren't rigorous in ensuring it will lead to the outcome you want. Secondly, there's a tendency not to be aggressive enough. If he and his technical team (which includes Pat Symonds, who was also involved during the 2009 rule changes and should remember its lessons), have applied what was learned then to the '21 vision, then it's very encouraging.

This brings us back to the question of spicing up the show. Eliminating the turbulent air forcefield is useful, but that in itself doesn't create more overtaking of the type we want to see. At its most extreme, the DRS has turned overtaking moves into drive-bys, which we also don't want to see. The kind of overtaking, the kind of racing, we need, is driven by variables.

To boil it down - overtaking is a function firstly of how possible it is to get past another car, and secondly on how often a quicker car is behind a slower one. The first can be influenced by getting rid of the force field, but the second one is nothing to do with that.

That's why you need as many variables as possible. The problem is that it is incredibly difficult to create, reliably and consistently, factors that vary the relative performance of cars over the course of a race. Attempts have been made to do it with the high-degradation Pirelli tyres and these are most generously described as a mixed bag.

Add to this the fact that rose-tinted spectacles mean people seem to think the famous Gilles Villeneuve versus Rene Arnoux second-place battle at Dijon in 1979 happened every other race, and you have a problem.

The reality is that, throughout much of grand prix racing history, these spectacular battles of passing and re-passing have been all-too-rare and were only reliably delivered by the slipstreaming classics of tracks like Monza and Reims. Returning to those kinds of old-school tracks is unlikely to be a shock reveal as part of the 2021 blueprint.

It's also worth noting that, throughout the history of the world championship, it has overwhelmingly been the cars at the front of the grid that have done the winning. The statistics tell their own story.

Victories by starting position

There have been all sorts of ideas discussed for modifying race weekend formats to mix up grids in the hope of creating more races like the 2005 Japanese Grand Prix when Kimi Raikkonen won from 17th on the grid. That doesn't necessarily mean reverse grids have to be adopted, but we cannot pretend lining up the cars in pace order and giving an advantage to the fastest is a recipe for great racing.

In 966 races (this data excludes the anomalous points-paying Indianapolis 500s of 1950-1960), 84.4% of the races have been won from the top four. A total of 655 (67.8%) have been won from the front row when you also factor in races where there were three or four cars at the front of the grid.

This brings us to another idea Brawn has hinted at - closing up the grid slots and considering alternative formations such as 3-2-3 or even 4-3-4. Currently, there is a gap of eight metres between grid slots, so that means you need to have a big difference in launch to make a pass. So, Brawn and his team are on the right path by considering tightening up the starting positions.

If anything, the grid change idea is extremely encouraging because it shows a willingness to consider more extreme solutions. This is a change that will create more variables in race order by reducing the percentage difference needed in starts to bring about a change of position.

You can argue it's potentially more dangerous, but the safety standards of the cars are sky high. You can also, rightly, point out it won't work at tight tracks like Monaco, but clearly exceptions can be made. Another thing for Brawn to remember is that things don't have to be homogenised to within an inch of their life.

But will there be more of the draconian changes Brawn referred to when interviewed in 2013? We don't know exactly how dramatic the changes that will be outlined are going to be, but it seems unlikely it will represent a fundamental change to the look of the cars.

Whenever there have been proposals, both in F1 and outside of it, motorsport has tended to be hugely reactionary. For example, you can make a good case for reducing the top body aero in favour of underbody downforce generation. While it's naïve to suggest this will make cars follow very closely automatically, because turbulent air will still impact well-optimised underbody aero, it should improve matters.

Things don't have to be homogenised to within an inch of their life

But if F1 offers a vision that doesn't match the basic wing model that has been prevalent for most of the last 50 years, it will lead to endless hand-wringing about the DNA of grand prix cars.

When IndyCar overhauled its cars early in this decade, what became the DeltaWing sportscar was one of the concepts considered. It was rejected, but it would have given IndyCar an undeniable visual identify. And the appeal of an ultra-lightweight car cannot be ignored.

Having watched the car go into the chicane on the back straight at Daytona in person a few years ago, what caught the eye about it was that the 615kg sportscar looked dramatic even when it was understeering - something very rare in grand prix cars. Could there be a lesson to be learned there?

The hope that is the new rules blueprint does go far enough. Unfortunately, this cannot be an expectation given F1's history of trying to solve its problems over the past 20 years.

Brawn has got a hell of a challenge on his hands, and given how difficult it is to produce a close, competitive field that will produce the kinds of unexpected results we all want, there's every chance he and his team will not get it right.

It will be understandable if he does fail despite being aggressive. But what won't be tolerable is if the changes are half-baked and not extreme enough to have any chance of having the hoped-for impact. He must heed his own words from 2013 about not being too shy to make draconian changes.

Better to risk glorious failure than accept wooly half-measures.