The 2022 rule change result that should worry F1

The 2022 Formula 1 season is now on the home stretch. Just three races remain – the Interlagos sprint, then the Sao Paulo and Abu Dhabi grand prix events. The main narratives are already closed, with the two titles sealed.

The remaining focus shifted to Sergio Perez’s attempt to deprive Charles Leclerc of second place in a championship the Ferrari driver once led by 34 points. And there’s Max Verstappen possibly extending his single-season win record to 16, with a potential season sweep of sprint victories to boot.

But there’s one narrative that’s rather gone missing from F1 in 2022. It’s the nomenclature surrounding previous team success splits that was also a divide on budgets: ‘Class A’ versus ‘Class B’.

Given that the only official F1 Class B recognition is the 1987 Jim Clark Trophy – contested by drivers not running turbocharged engines and claimed by Tyrrell driver Jonathan Palmer – we can trace the recent philosophical class divide to comments made by Haas driver Kevin Magnussen.

Back in 2018, the Dane, noting that only Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull drivers had won races in the previous four years, said he was “kind of creating this big championship in my head”. He was doing so to find motivation considering that glittering F1 results were out of reach for anyone but the three squads that actually hoovered up all victories from 2014-2019.

That year, three drivers from ‘Class B’ stood on the podium alongside the regular visitors. In 2022, McLaren’s Lando Norris is the only non-Red Bull, Ferrari or Mercedes driver to do so. And without Charles Leclerc’s Imola spin, F1 wouldn’t have even had that.

New stories have abounded in the championship this year. Fuelled by F1’s ongoing popularity boom, the new car designs have been greeted by a swelled and fervent audience – one still embracing live action events despite the horrible pandemic shutdowns.

How that boom continues during the unfolding cost of living crisis will be something to watch heading into 2023.

Norris remains the only non-Red Bull, Ferrari, or Mercedes driver to reach the podium in 2022

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

The competitive order was indeed shaken up as per the intention behind those new rules, but only really in that Mercedes’ W13 design stunningly dropped it from title contention. And Ferrari made good on its promise to get back into the title fight. Whisper it: ‘Class A’ battle. Yet F1 has crowned the same champion from one era to another.

The cars have been well received for their dynamic looks and the racing is indeed better if circumstances permit it. But there are issues – such as the drivers’ frustrations with restricted lines, lack of set-up options and lugging ever more weight.

And the success spread outside of the top three is Norris’s sole 2022 podium (he scored one in 2020 and four in 2021, years where AlphaTauri, Racing Point and McLaren actually won races) which is illustrated and backed up by the numbers logging the ultimate pace of each car.

Mercedes’ supertime average comes in at 0.828% - although its development work to cure porpoising has worked well, it implies the Silver Arrows’ 15 podiums are more like shock results

Where in 2021 the whole F1 field was covered by 3.102%, in 2022 this comes down to 2.442%. These gaps are calculated using Autosport’s supertimes method, where the quickest times from every weekend are expressed as 100% total and a team’s overall campaign speed becomes an average away from that.

But last year, Haas, with its non-developed package driven by two rookies, created an outlier bottom figure. It’s therefore better to look instead at Williams being 1.929% off the ultimate 2021 pace in ninth. This then shows the pace spread between the whole field has actually got worse at the start of the new era.

That suggests a clear gulf in class across the grid. And perhaps one statistical reason why there’s been little discussion of Class A or B denominations this year is because on pure pace, it’s more like a three-way split.

Ferrari leads the way, with Red Bull just 0.033% behind, largely thanks to Leclerc’s qualifying prowess and Verstappen’s early-season understeer struggles with the then-overweight RB18.

Mercedes has spent much of 2022 in no-man's-land, behind the front two teams, but clear of the rest

Photo by: Carl Bingham / Motorsport Images

But Mercedes’ average comes in at 0.828%, which, although the development work to cure its porpoising ills has worked well, implies the Silver Arrows’ 15 podiums are more like shock results and that Red Bull and Ferrari should have cleaned up.

This gap extends back to Alpine’s 1.289% in fourth, with both numbers below the 0.761% gap McLaren produced in third in the 2021 calculations. There, Ferrari was fourth and AlphaTauri’s 0.789% made it five teams covered by 1%.

All this should worry F1 – mainly because there’s not a lot it can do about such gaps now.

There were warnings, as there are with any major formula re-write, that one team may dominate, as Red Bull has in 2022. But at the same time, things would have been much closer up front if Ferrari and Mercedes hadn’t dropped the ball quite the way they have this year.

The onus is now really on teams such as McLaren and Alpine to finally step up from ‘Class B’ and hit the targets they’ve long set for getting back into championship contention. The same can be extended to Aston Martin, given Lawrence Stroll’s resources and investment.

Alfa Romeo, Haas and Williams are more curious cases given their financial challenges in the era just gone.

And then there’s AlphaTauri. But that’s more of a Red Bull concern given it needs the Italian squad to recreate the stable platform it previously provided to assess the true talent of junior drivers – and the inbound Nyck de Vries.

Alpine and McLaren are hoping to bridge the gap to the top three teams

Photo by: Alpine

The cost cap, allied with F1’s recent growth, is a key reason why midfield ‘Class B’ squads are much more financially healthy than they were before. The hope is that reining in spending at the bigger teams will combine with the inevitable closing of performance gaps through rules stability, and in turn allowing the success spread to swell further. The latter phenomenon is something history suggests can be expected.

But the spotlight is fixed on the cost cap right now given Red Bull’s overspend and punishment. The next problem is that it will be many months before F1 discovers if the FIA’s $7million fine and windtunnel resource restriction was enough to deter others from sailing too close to the wind or indeed breaking the cap intentionally to find a competitive edge if they can afford it. A luxury only the biggest teams could conceivably cover.

The performance gaps logged across 2022 suggest that a 2010 scenario won’t happen without a massive Mercedes revival and Ferrari fixing its key weaknesses

Other than the higher floor and diffuser changes coming for 2023, F1’s technical rules are relatively stable now the move to lower tyre blanket temperatures is on its way out. The likely need for all-new tyre compounds for 2024, with the current plan to get rid of the blankets entirely for that season still on, may force more comprehensive redesigns that could close up the field. Or, indeed, spread it out further again.
F1 will surely hope a campaign like 2010 will unfurl next year, a season with four drivers’ as title contenders.

But the performance gaps logged across 2022 suggest that won’t happen without a massive Mercedes revival and Ferrari fixing its key weaknesses. If they do this, talk of Class A versus Class B will inevitably take a backseat and may allow longer reflection to see if the remaining team gaps can close.

As the 2022 ruleset converges, will the gaps between teams begin to fall?

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images