The new rules of F1's tech war

It feels like aeons have passed since we were nestled in the Barcelona media centre, mouths agape with surprise as Lewis Hamilton pulled the steering wheel of his box-fresh Mercedes W11 towards him.

As he did so while exiting the final corner, the front wheels pointed inwards by a few degrees, before returning to their regular position as Hamilton pushed the wheel back in. What was known within Mercedes' own circles as DAS - or dual-axis steering - gave the team a way to run more toe out in the corners to boost cornering grip, while being able to turn the toe angle in to limit drag on the straights.

Who says Formula 1 is too restrictive? As the Nobel Prize-winning economist Bengt Holmstrom once opined: "The thinking is that creativity springs from freedom. That's a fundamental misunderstanding. Creativity is born from challenges, limitations and questions."

Mercedes, in that instance, saw the limitations posed by the regulations and, challenged by the FIA, managed to question the common convention of a steering wheel and use it to make changes to the car's set-up on the fly. It was definitely creative. But innovative gains can be fleeting, and Mercedes will have one shot at determining the merits of DAS before it becomes outlawed by the FIA.

PLUS: Mercedes' DAS: What is it, how does it work, and is it legal?

In F1's coronavirus-enforced hiatus, Mercedes will surely have found some time to fine-tune the system around its more philanthropic endeavours within the 'Project Pitlane' group, in which the seven UK-based F1 teams joined forces to build ventilators for hospitals. Ferrari, too, was involved in producing medical equipment over the pause.

All F1 teams have also had to shut down their factories for 63 consecutive days but, around that, have had extra time to pore through testing data and consider changes to their 2020 cars, which are still yet to be raced in anger. That said, the financial implications and uncertainty of a pandemic mean that some teams will have upgrades in the pipeline but need to be assured of finances to complete them.

That uncertainty extends to suppliers, and it's not inconceivable that the smaller operators entwined with F1's cast of teams had to press pause on their own operations and push back any production until lockdown measures were wound down. It's been a difficult time for all but, with racing back on the menu, there should be some signs of green shoots.

Current cars remain for 2021

Those of you bursting with excitement over F1's hotly anticipated technical overhaul, complete with its return to ground-effects and low noses, will have to wait a little longer.

With 2020's cars originally designed for just one season before the rules were supposed to change, they now have to stay the course - and so each team's respective engineers will have to hope that their machinery has enough growing room for two years

Although the word 'unprecedented' has enjoyed plenty of use in lockdown vernacular, times are as such, and the hit that every team's economic situation will take as a result of the pandemic means that shifting those rules back to 2022 makes sense. To lighten the burden further, the 2020 chassis will remain for next season too.

There will be a considerable change to the floor, however, as the unexpected legacy of keeping the current formula is that the 2019-spec Pirelli tyres will remain in place for a further season. Kept for 2020 after the teams vetoed the squarer construction Pirelli had developed for this year, the 2019 tyres will begin to deal with aero loads that they weren't designed for.

Rather than force Pirelli to up the tyre pressures even further, F1 has instead decided to cut a triangular section out of the floor to inhibit all of the cuts and slots that permeate the current floors' edges. Those slots assist the diffuser by encouraging air to pass around the rear tyre, limiting the amount of turbulence that it 'squirts' into the diffuser and reducing its effectiveness - so removing them will cut about 10% of the cars' downforce.

Although teams will be allowed to make small aero changes throughout 2020 and over the off-season, the gains they make will still fall within the working range of load that the Pirellis can handle - so it's a sensible, if rudimentary, measure.

Other changes can be made depending on the FIA's approval, as McLaren has also been granted permission to make the tweaks needed to accommodate its switch to Mercedes powerplants next season.

The general design freeze will be a pleasing scenario for some, particularly those who impressed in pre-season testing, but it could be a double-edged sword. With 2020's cars originally designed for just one season before the rules were supposed to change, they now have to stay the course - and so each team's respective engineers will have to hope that their machinery has enough growing room for two years, rather than just one.

This could hinder Racing Point, which drew a lot of attention during testing thanks to its distinctly Mercedes-flavoured RP20. Although quick around Barcelona, with both Sergio Perez and Lance Stroll bothering the upper reaches of the timing boards, there are questions about the amount of development that the car can field before the rewards tail off significantly.

Technical director Andrew Green, while fielding questions about Racing Point's new car during pre-season testing, had not suggested that too many developments were in the pipeline for 2020, but that was before the team had grasped the potential of its new chariot.

But in April, while speaking to Autosport following F1's decision to stick with the current cars for another year, Green explained that the team hadn't planned concrete developments in case the pejoratively dubbed 'Pink Mercedes' hadn't managed to live up to the team's hopes.

PLUS: Can F1's 'best' small team win again?

"It's just at the time we were weighing up the risk of what happens if we fail," Green said. "If we fail to do this, if we stop what we're doing, go down a different road and we don't recover the performance and we end up with a car that's actually slower than we had last year. And the thinking at the time was, 'Well, it'll only be for one year, because we're gonna have to scrap it anyway.'

"That scenario, as far as I can see, didn't materialise. So, for us now, we exceeded the performance of last year's car with the new car. So, we're not concerned about running it for effectively 18 months."

Perhaps there are also questions emerging at Ferrari too. The SF1000 appeared to be troubled during testing, and it looked as though the engine had been pegged back following the fallout from the FIA's investigation of its power unit.

There's always the chance that Ferrari was playing with sandbags but, if the 2020 car does indeed turn out to be something of a lemon, Charles Leclerc will have to spend two years rather than one attempting to corral it into some semblance of dignified results. And a penny for the Maranello-bound Carlos Sainz Jr's thoughts if the Ferrari does indeed emerge to be lacking in the pace department for two straight seasons.

What developments can we expect in 2020?

OK, let's reframe that question: will anyone else develop their own DAS system in 2020? It seems unlikely at this stage; given the factory shutdowns, economic uncertainties, the fact that Mercedes has had the system in development for perhaps over a year, and the cost of prioritising it over lower-hanging fruit when it'll be banned anyway in 2021, it'll be a small miracle if anyone else does.

Mercedes' upgrade package could be anything from a few tiny details to a 2019-style between-tests overhaul, but it looks as though the reigning champion team has the capital to keep churning out updates

Mercedes is expected to have its own upgrades for the Austrian Grand Prix this weekend - referred to by technical chief James Allison as a "chunk" of its work from the first few months of the year - meaning that the class of the field is going to be significantly harder to beat.

It's unknown how extensive Mercedes' upgrade package will be, and could be anything from a few tiny details to a 2019-style between-tests overhaul, but it looks as though the reigning champion team has the capital to keep churning out updates, global crisis notwithstanding.

Ferrari will have a new engine in the back of the SF1000 in its bid to overturn its troubles of testing, along with a new gearbox to iron out the unreliability it faced at Barcelona. But the likes of Haas will pop a cork in their plans until budgets are guaranteed, and the financial problems faced by McLaren and Williams suggest that both teams will also save their developments until they can find new investment.

Back in testing, Red Bull had experimented with some new bargeboard options and cooling tweaks, with the latter perhaps a consideration when tackling the Austrian Grand Prix - especially following last year's heatwave, which caught Mercedes by surprise.

Racing Point had upgrades queued up for Australia in a bid to leapfrog its midfield rivals, and Renault is bringing a triple-upgrade package, but we'll probably not know the full picture until the cars are rolled down the pitlane for scrutineering.

One thing's for sure, with the 2020 cars now settled in for another year, and the cost cap due for next season, we'll potentially have two very closely contested F1 seasons. Sure, the COVID-19 layoff has been an awful situation for all - but in F1 terms, let's hope 2020 was worth the wait.