Things you might've missed in F1's 2021 rules

At last, the vision of Formula 1 2021 looks a little clearer in the crystal ball.

After plenty of behind-closed-doors wrangling and gamesmanship among the championship's teams and officials, there is now more than just a proof of concept. To the relief of many, the anticipated wide-scale changes for the 2021 season have now been signed off - and F1 will evolve dramatically at the close of next season.

In a pre-US Grand Prix press conference, F1's motorsport managing director Ross Brawn - sharing the table with CEO Chase Carey and FIA technical director Nikolas Tombazis - presented not only the new style of car that will take to the track, but also F1's new flavour. In doing so, he also took a few carefully planned swipes at the previous management's direction.

F1 has learned from the lessons of the past. The new cost cap stems from a desire not to fail where the former Resource Restriction Agreement did, and the new 2021 technical regulations want to undo the wrongs of the '17 ruleset - where Bernie Ecclestone and the FIA were captivated by the siren's song of faster lap times, to the detriment of the on-track product.

The technical regulations are the most pervasively different to anything that F1 has experienced before - so much so that they've had to be completely rewritten. Year by year, the FIA's amendments are made to an existing document - but 2021 brings a literal and metaphorical clean-sheet approach.

Ground effects return, but these aren't the same breed of ground effects that had cars hermetically sealed to surface in the early '80s. Although the theory is the same and Bernoulli's principle doesn't change, these are ground effects run to an alien ruleset for most F1 designers.

Beyond that, there's a whole raft of further changes: low noses, simpler front wings, redesigned rear wings, and the culling of bargeboards. It amounts to salting the earth so nothing will ever grow there again. But there's many more new things beyond the aesthetics.

First, let's go over the new ground effects again briefly. In the late '70s and early '80s, teams used sliding skirts to stop the accelerated air under the car from seeping out and the ambient air from seeping into the Venturi tunnels in the sidepods.

Skirts aren't about to make a comeback, and instead the regulations define "floor fences". These, as their very nomenclature suggests, will not be flexible, and the overall floor design itself is strictly regulated. But it means that the ground effects in use on the 2021 car should not possess the same capricious nature of the colossal sidepods of the past.

Another area of the car that should satisfy the purists is the return of the low-nose front-end.

F1 will provide server space for each team to upload open-source parts, and if a team would rather save the effort of designing their own part, it can access the CAD data and drawings of another team's design and make it itself

The thumb-tip crash structure should also disappear with a "no radius of curvature below 50mm" stipulation, banishing any last lingering memories of the 2014 season's horrendous crash structure appendages.

While that suggests an aesthetically driven decision, the technical regulations also stipulate that the crash structure at the front end will be longer, so this change seems likely to be a perfectly harmonious way of killing two birds (presumably one with a massive proboscis beak) with one stone.

The technical direction isn't 100% complete, and there's still provision in the rules to define some further crash tests for the new noses, but this shouldn't impinge on the improved visual qualities at play.

Side impact structures are also set to change, but that area is still under investigation by the FIA.

What's clear is that the current two impact spars will be replaced by one, larger structure - and this will be another prescriptively designed component to ensure the right level of safety for each driver. Select aerodynamic parts will now be covered in a rubber membrane too, to reduce the risk of debris appearing mid-race.

The nose now attaches directly to the front wing, of which four elements are now allowed - that's one less than the current rules permit. As all those elements connect from the endplate to the nose, one particular piece of aerodynamic terminology will finally approach its deathknell. The Y250 vortex, so called because it's a vortex produced 250mm away from the centreline of the car, is unadulterated jargon. But in current times, it serves an important purpose in building a strong rotation of airflow that pushes tyre wake away when it moves along the flanks of the car.

It's gone now, and the endplates have also been redefined - blending smoothly into an upturned section that looks like the wing adornments of a Boeing 737 aeroplane. With that smooth transition, footplates will also no longer exist.

Without those tools to generate bundles of airflow rotation, the dreaded outwash will be more strictly monitored. Teams will no doubt still find ways to turn air around the front wheels, but it should be a lot less prevalent.

The wheels, however, get new tools. For the first time since 2009, wheel covers make a return - but rather than allow the teams to exploit that area and risk diluting the overtaking statistics that F1 and the FIA have neatly crafted, these will be prescriptively designed. That also applies to the new deflectors, attached to the inside section of the wheel drum.

The deflectors are not just there for show - they exist to condition airflow around the wheel and help to minimise the antagonism produced by the turbulent wake further down the car.

Prescriptive designs now form a greater quantity of the car's design. Part of that is to restrict the cost of aerodynamic research and development, making the cost cap more realistically attainable, but also to retain the aerodynamic effect that F1 wants the teams to have to improve the racing. That fits into the new design classifications, and open-source F1 parts are also now included for the first time.

What defines an open-source part? F1 will provide a dedicated server space for each team to upload their open-source parts into, and if a team would rather save the effort of designing their own part, it can access the CAD data and drawings of another team's design and make it itself.

It seems to be the antithesis of competition, so this is only reserved for generally performance-inconsequential parts such as steering wheels, pedals, driveshafts and the like. For 2021 and '22, this expands to brakes, but these will be standardised afterwards.

Brakes are now added to the list of parts that have a specific seasonal allocation. Each car may only use 22 sets of brake parts throughout the season - and any contravention of that is subject to a small grid penalty. That means brake assemblies will have to be beefed up to cope with the load, and the consensus seems to be that the current carbon-carbon brake discs (where the disc has a carbon matrix) will eventually give way to a carbon-ceramic formulation. They will be bigger to cope with the new 18-inch wheels.

Suspension geometries have also been streamlined, as their complexity has skyrocketed in recent seasons with the rise of heave springs (or inerters, as they're also called) and raised mounting points. They've now been cast aside, as have the recent developments into hydraulic suspension. F1 will revert to nice, simple spring-and-damper set-ups - although vehicle dynamicists will surely find some tricks up their sleeves.

While 2021 promises so much - and inevitably, there will be some areas where the concept fails to deliver - there's plenty of reasons to be optimistic about F1's future

After meddling from the manufacturers, the powertrains have been left untouched for the most part. Fuel pumps have been largely standardised to save costs and eliminate any fuel trickery, and manufacturers are now locked in to offering their customer teams the same specification of parts and fuels. Cost saving has had an effect, however, with non-commercially available materials banned and raising the allowable mass by 5kg aim at reducing the overall expense.

Generally, the internals aren't going to be too different. Apart from the vocal detractors of the hybrid power units, who presumably consider anything less lairy than a V12 to be sacrilegious, they're actually quite benign in reality. The focus on the aerodynamics underpins the work that F1 and the FIA have done to redress the balance of the championship. While there will undoubtedly be a further shift in powertrain technology around 2026, the hybrids are here to stay for now.

A key difference, which serves as the cherry on the aerodynamic cake, is the new breed of rear wings.

Without any form of conventional endplate, beam wings return and the wing loops around in a continuous structure to weaken the vortices produced at the rear. Currently, as the high pressure on top of the wing surface attempts to diffuse into the lower ambient conditions, strong vortices are formed and that has a hugely detrimental effect on the front end of a following car.

By changing that construction, any circulation should be a lot less strong. There will still be some wake, as it's impossible to completely change the world of physics, but the gripes it causes the car behind should be reduced. Indeed, the figures presented at the press conference suggests that current cars experience 55% of their peak downforce when running one car length behind another, while the new rules deliver 86% of that - meaning close racing through medium-to-high speed corners should be colossally improved.

There will be some caveats to that, and there's no way that one can possibly simulate for every permutation of yaw, wind speed and the aero properties of both cars, but it's encouraging nonetheless.

For once, a new F1 ruleset has been designed on the sway of data rather than purely on gut instinct.

A lot of hard work has been poured into making 2021 a completely different prospect - and while the teams have wanted to have their say to protect their own interests to a degree, people also want to be involved with a labour of love. Everyone in F1 is united by a sheer love of competition, and the new rules promise to deliver the closest level of competition yet.

Although the standardised and prescriptive elements of design will irk some people, there has to be compromise.

F1 has avoided its Brexit moment by refusing to indulge in uncompromising cakeism - the cars will be slower and heavier, but with the offer of better racing throughout the season. If the annual trudge through the round at Paul Ricard even manages to be exciting, then the rules will certainly have proved their worth.

We'll only see the true effects of that in a year-and-a-half. Buy there's no point in wishing 2020 away either, as it's the final chance to sit and enjoy the current breed of cars as they are.

While 2021 promises so much - and inevitably, there will be some areas where the concept fails to deliver - there's plenty of reasons to be optimistic about F1's future.