The early clues Barcelona testing offers on solving F1's overtaking problem

“A format of car that would allow the cars to race more effectively with one another on the track and to permit an easier and more natural form of overtaking than we've been used to in Formula 1 recent seasons.”

Here, Mercedes chief technical officer James Allison succinctly sums up one of the key aims behind the rule changes that have resulted in the brand new F1 cars currently being tested at Barcelona this week.

PLUS: The defiant hope behind Ferrari's F1 2022 mission

This thinking was rooted in 2017 and Liberty Media’s takeover of the championships – with F1’s owner then publicly baffled by the previous regime’s decision to reintroduce faster, higher-downforce-producing cars for that year, while at the same time expecting action-packed races.

Because overtaking has been a problem in F1 for generations. Now, in an era where even slightly calm races are roundly and loudly condemned on social media, the championship hopes that its latest rules revolution will finally address the issue.

So, with two days of 2022 pre-season testing complete, what do the early signs suggest in terms of an answer to F1’s long-standing vexation?

Now that all the 2022 race drivers have had the chance to sample the new machinery, their opinions are a rather suitable place to start. Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc were among the drivers facing the assembled F1 media for the first time in testing on Thursday, and they proved the most expansive answers on two of the key areas (as ever, things aren’t simple!) that F1’s overtaking riddle can be broken down into.

This duo were also drivers – sat alongside Sebastian Vettel, Fernando Alonso and Yuki Tsunoda – that confirmed they had moved to get closer to a rival car to try and really feel the impact of the new aerodynamics.

Charles Leclerc, Ferrari F1-75

Photo by: Alessio Morgese

“It felt a bit better,” reflected Leclerc. “And to until you actually get really, really close, [only] then you feel the loss of downforce. But I’ll have to do a few more laps behind a car [to be sure].”

Verstappen went further, saying: “Following a few cars feels like it’s a little bit easier to stay behind. At least you don’t have this weird loss of downforce where suddenly you have a lot of understeer or massive oversteer.

“Of course, I don’t expect it to be fully gone and that you can follow on the rear diffuser because of the speeds we’re still doing in an F1 car. But it all seems a bit more under control.”

"The braking is quite different. The distance in itself is not so different, but the way you are braking is different. [I am] still trying to find the perfect stop and the perfect way of braking for this year," Charles Leclerc

So far, then, so good. And here’s why following closely matters in the context of the overtaking issue.

‘Dirty air’ is a well understood term for F1 fans, and the new cars are intended to combat this sensation by sending that disruptive force higher up and not have it impacting on the front wing of cars following directly behind another – which is what caused the sudden lack of downforce sensation outlined above.

Judging by Verstappen’s comments in particular, the early signs are that this aim is going as intended.

Drivers feeling they can get close to other cars – and on Thursday at Barcelona Daniel Ricciardo by chasing Leclerc, and Nicholas Latifi doing likewise to Nikita Mazepin, were observed as doing so at various points in the second of the two four-hour sessions – is also a welcome note after something Autosport observed when we ventured trackside here on day one.

PLUS: How the new F1 cars look from the Barcelona trackside

Lance Stroll, Aston Martin AMR22

Photo by: Carl Bingham / Motorsport Images

Taking Barcelona’s Turn 1 right-hander at the end of the long main straight as an example, the drivers are braking at exactly the same point – the 50m board on approach, where the long pitlane exit lines finally end – in the new machines as they did during the 2021 Spanish Grand Prix weekend with the old ultra-high-downforce cars. Leclerc indicated this was indeed the case around the rest of the track as well.

But that runs contra to what some F1 insiders had hoped would occur with the new cars – that braking zones would be longer to give the drivers a better chance of pulling off natural overtakes (or even on some tracks where DRS made little impact anyway).

The problem in the previous era was that the cars were so fast – surely set to go down as F1’s quickest judging by the records set in 2020, before the rear floor tweaks cut speeds for tyre safety reasons last year – short braking distances acted as a double-whammy deterrent to passes.

The cars are much slower in corners such as the long, double turn-in Turn 4 right at the start of Barcelona’s middle sector, with the drivers having to wait a long time to get back on the gas having got down to a much lower speed than they did in previous years<

But even with braking zone distances being the same in 2021, if the following closely problem has been addressed – we’re still a long way from finding out for sure as the cliche goes for a reason – then car behaviour under braking gets elevated to even greater importance.

And the early clues on this from the two days of testing so far in 2022 is that braking is a real challenge.

“I would say mostly because of the weight,” said Leclerc. “The braking is quite different. The distance in itself is not so different, but the way you are braking is different. [I am] still trying to find the perfect stop and the perfect way of braking for this year.”

The car weight increase from 752kg in 2021 to 795kg for this year, which Verstappen called “a shame”, stems from the upgraded safety structures on the new cars, as well as the bigger 18-inch wheels.

Add in the ground effect formula meaning the cars now run much stiffer and having a downforce deficit at low speed compared to what came before, this has combined to inevitably lead to the cars behaving sluggishly in certain turn types, losing agility particularly in the slow corners.

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB18

Photo by: Alessio Morgese

This can be seen visibly from trackside. The cars are much slower in corners such as the long, double turn-in Turn 4 right at the start of Barcelona’s middle sector, with the drivers having to wait a long time to get back on the gas having got down to a much lower speed than they did in previous years, with some needing to correct slides and wiggles through both phases of the corner.

Back to the overtaking problem. If a car that can handle the slow speed stuff better and remain close to a rival after catching up in such turns, then logically its driver would have a greater chance of pulling off a pass elsewhere. But if a car is inherently quicker in such slow turns, then chances are it will qualify ahead of said rival in the first place…

F1 still has DRS and the Pirelli tyre management challenge to consider – with both proven to have an impact in increasing overtaking chances over the previous decade. But the championship’s stakeholders would love to eliminate these if possible, if we return to Allison’s description of a “natural form of overtaking” resulting from the new rules.

But if the drivers are already feeling that following other cars is indeed easier, then F1 seems right now at least to be on the right path to achieving this aim and possibly solving the overtaking problem overall. The amount of action in Barcelona’s May race, usually a dull affair, will provide a handy litmus test.

Having offered his thoughts on how F1 cars are behaving differently in 2022, Leclerc returned to the cockpit of the F1-75 for the afternoon session.

He took over the Ferrari from his team-mate Carlos Sainz Jr, who was only prevented from topping the morning running when Sergio Perez’s late red flag stoppage resulted in a flurry of fast times that included Ricciardo nipping ahead for McLaren.

But Leclerc delivered the test’s second quickest time so far in topping the afternoon running – a 1m19.689s that is just 0.121s shy of Lando Norris’s overall best so far for McLaren from day one. The Scuderia’s new machine appears to be behaving notably consistently in different corner types around the track and has seemingly run faultlessly in reliability terms so far – something that cannot be said of its engine customers Haas and Alfa Romeo.

The former lost further time with a damaged fuel pump with Mazepin at the wheel in Thursday’s second session, while Alfa racked up the second lowest number of laps of all the teams on day two – 92 versus Ferrari’s 150.

Being close to fastest so far in the pre-season is of course meaningless, but Sainz nevertheless tantalising concluded that Ferrari is “nowhere near to the limit of the car or finding where the performance is”.

Carlos Sainz Jr., Ferrari F1-75, leaves the garage

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images