How F1's biggest crisis helped trigger its exciting 2021 season

It is almost hard to believe how different a situation Formula 1 is in right now compared to the last time it rocked up to race in Austria. Rewind 12 months and grand prix racing had arrived at the Red Bull Ring for the delayed season opener unsettled and uncertain.

The COVID-19 pandemic, and more specifically the lockdown that effectively shut down the globe, had left the series facing its biggest crisis in decades. While F1 owners Liberty Media and governing body the FIA could weather the storm triggered by the lack of income from no races, for teams it was a different matter.

The less well-off outfits in particular faced a battle for survival, with only loans, new investors or some help from the commercial rights holders helping keep them alive before the show could get back on the road. But even with the racing getting going again, it was clear that things could not remain the same as they were pre-COVID.

If teams were given freedom to unleash spending at will, then it would have unleashed chaos. In the end, only a few big hitters would have been left with the other heading for the exit door having been priced out the market. That was why FIA president Jean Todt and then F1 CEO Chase Carey worked so hard in early 2020 to ensure that F1 put in place what became known as the ‘New Deal.’

The end result was a framework of dramatic cost cuts; an agreed cost cap level, and a host of technical regulations – like the rollover of chassis from 2020 in to 2021 – that were like nothing F1 had seen before. But, while F1 had arrived in Austria bruised and battered from the impact of the pandemic, a successful double-header laid the groundwork for it to regain belief in itself.

The events delivered the springboard the series needed to rebuild its confidence, and the completion of as full a season as possible proved that the worst was behind it and that the future was much more certain.

But as F1 departed Austria after last year’s Styrian Grand Prix and those back-to-back wins for a Mercedes team that was in a class of its own (despite the reliability wobbles from round one), it would have been hard to predict just how dramatically different the grid would feel 12 months later on its return.

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB16B, Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes W12

Photo by: Jerry Andre / Motorsport Images

We have on our hands one of the closest team and driver head-to-heads for years. There is so little to choose between Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen that race wins are being decided by the slimmest of circumstances – be it good fortune, strategy or unforeseen errors.

But something else quite remarkable has happened over the past 12 months too. The whole grid has closed up: the midfield has perhaps never been tighter and more competitive right now, and that’s even having a bearing on the fight further forward.

After those two dire campaigns in 2017 and 2018 when the top three teams of Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari locked out the podium spots for all but two races (Baku 2017 with Lance Stroll and Baku 2018 with Sergio Perez), things are now much more evenly spread out.

Spending has had to be trimmed back; painful redundancies pushed through the system and there has no longer been a blank pay cheque to go chasing performance. Efficiency is the name of the game and that has helped keep things more equal between the pair

We’ve had AlphaTauri and Racing Point taking race victories; and it is only Alfa Romeo, Haas and Williams that have failed to take a podium in the last two seasons.

And while F1 is far from perfect – the cars still can’t race close enough thanks to sensitive aero and tyres, and there remains too big a gulf between the top two and the rest – the series is definitely in pretty robust shape ahead of the switch to its new era in 2022.

When you dig deep into the reasons why things are so close right now, and the elements that have compressed the field, it can all actually be traced back to the same COVID crisis that hurt so much 12 months ago. The limits on homologation and the carryover of cars have triggered a rule set where the performance of the Mercedes and the Red Bull have converged.

There was no chance for Mercedes to make the big step it normally does over the winter with an all-new car; and no room either for Red Bull to make the slow start that has hampered many recent campaigns. Throw into the mix too the tough decisions the two teams have had to make, thanks to the biting of the cost cap.

Pierre Gasly, AlphaTauri AT02, Charles Leclerc, Ferrari SF21

Photo by: Jerry Andre / Motorsport Images

Spending has had to be trimmed back; painful redundancies pushed through the system and there has no longer been a blank pay cheque to go chasing performance. Efficiency is the name of the game and that has helped keep things more equal between the pair.

When you look at how the races have panned out, it hasn’t been a case of one of them suddenly unleashing the kind of B-spec level of updates we saw in the past to take wins. Developments are much more subtle; the fights between them much closer.

The cost cap has also ensured a full grid that has survived the crisis and is now in far better shape overall than it has been for a while. Another factor to take into account is that the pandemic has changed mindsets; and perhaps delivered a hunger to maximise opportunities that may have been lacking before.

This is something that Red Bull team boss Christian Horner has cited in the way that Red Bull has responded to the sniff it has of toppling Mercedes. Reflecting on the manner of its victory at Paul Ricard, a track where Mercedes had been so dominant in the past, he said: “I think it's just testimony to how hard the team's worked, you know, over the last 12 months and particularly through the pandemic.

“When you look at the dominance that their car [Mercedes] had last year and let's not forget, 60% of the car is carryover, it's the same chassis that they were winning all those races last year.

“So I think that the team has just done a phenomenal job and we've just got to keep that momentum going, because, you know, Mercedes are such a strong team. It's only a matter of time before they bounce back. But we've just got to keep doing what we're doing.”

For F1, the current state of play very much falls in line with high ambitions that Todt had laid out as he got into action 12 months ago to save the series. As he prepared to do everything he could to ensure four wheel motor racing could survive the pandemic, he laid out some hope of there potentially being some positives to come out of it.

Bernd Maylander, Safety Car Driver, with Jean Todt, President, FIA

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

“In each disaster, in each crisis, you have a lot of bad but you have some good," he said last year before F1 resumed. "So, among the good is that we have the opportunity of making things better for the future. And mainly in Formula 1, we reached some heights [with costs], which for me are not reasonable and which we need to address."

As F1 prepares for another epic battle in this most spectacular of seasons, it seems Todt’s ambition was delivered.

Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes, 2nd position, and Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing, 1st position, with his trophy

Photo by: Drew Gibson / Motorsport Images