What the revolutionary new breed of Formula 1 cars feel like to drive

Formula 1 has turned its back on the fastest-ever cars to grace a circuit by radically rethinking the way downforce is generated. The new-for-2022 regulations have also added some 43kg to the minimum weight limit, and several teams are reckoned to be comfortably north of that, too. It’s the heaviest grand prix grid for almost nine decades.

And yet, despite the bulk gained over the winter and the early evidence that lap times have increased, drivers are relishing getting to know their new rides. They’re having to adapt their driving styles, react to the return of porpoising after its 40-year layoff and get used to revised tyres and the knock-on effect of the altered reference points from the cockpit.

At the United States Grand Prix in 2019, the FIA single-seater technical director Nikolas Tombazis reckoned the forthcoming cars would be “approximately 3 to 3.5 seconds slower per lap”. Come recent months, the mood had shifted. Some predicted the generational split might be as little as half a second. The suggestion after three days of running in the Barcelona shakedown is that the true difference lies somewhere in the middle.

Lewis Hamilton topped the Spanish show with a late Friday run of 1m19.138s on soft tyres. That was 2.397s slower than his own pole effort from the 2021 Spanish Grand Prix - albeit with car spec, fuels loads, and engine modes shrouded in secrecy.

Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes W13

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

What’s clear to see standing at the side of the track, particularly at the tight Turn 5 right-hander and fiddly 14-15 chicane, is that it’s the slow corners where the pace has bled away. Sebastian Vettel’s steering inputs are particularly aggressive in the Aston Martin as he asks, and waits, for the front axle to answer. That tallies with the weight gain from increased safety structures and the move to 18-inch wheels that have added to the lethargy.

If it’s noticeable from behind the barrier to a spectator, it’s abundantly clear for those at the wheel. Lando Norris reckoned: “The weight makes a massive difference for just the driving, how the car reacts. It's a lot heavier than it was last season. So, it just feels a bit slower, a bit more sluggish. It's like running with the race fuel of last season before almost a qualifying lap. You do feel it in like the braking and certain areas. The performance is not quite the same.”

But, as the pre-season shakedown proved, fears from teams over mass unreliability were unfounded. That allowed some 3109 laps to be completed and, during that seat time, drivers have been learning to adapt. The adjustment needn’t dictate drivers develop a new skillset, though. As Williams racer Alex Albon noted, for many, it’s already in the locker thanks to their rise on the junior single-seater ladder.

"The weight makes a massive difference for just the driving, how the car reacts" Lando Norris

“It feels almost like an [FIA] F2 car in terms of the way it responds,” he reported. “But with Formula 1 corner speed, so it doesn't feel very alien… it's a bit more finesse required for the driving.”

The low-speed sensation might have been a touch underwhelming aboard the new ground-effect racers, but drivers have never waxed lyrical about the slow sections of a track. It’s of no great loss.

And, anyway, aboard a 2022 car the quick corners are something to be cherished. This sentiment even arrives at Barcelona, a track that has nothing akin to the 180mph-plus onslaught that is 130R at Suzuka or the Maggotts-Becketts sequence of Silverstone.

Lando Norris, McLaren MCL36

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

Turns 3 and 15 in Spain offer the highest available cornering speeds, and the view from the edge of the track is impressive. Situated at the former, the very long and flowing right-hander, all but the troublesome Alfa Romeo are glued to the asphalt. That car requires several mid-corner corrections. At the other end of the scale, and even anticipating a level of sandbagging, the Mercedes and Red Bull are so violent at turn-in it looks as though the car is about to swap ends. It never does, the rear stays planted, but it speaks of a pair of machines that have given their drivers the upmost confidence.

As such, George Russell has already made the W13 out to be an equal to its constructors’ title-winning predecessor through the quicker corners. He said: “Overall, I think they have probably outperformed the initial projections that Formula 1 had set for these new regulations. I think we’ve seen every single team is far faster than the four-seconds slower that they were planned to be. But obviously the high-speed performance is definitely on a par with what we were seeing last year. It’s pretty impressive.”

If in the faster corners the shift to ground-effect has earned promising comparison to the previous breed of F1 racer, feedback is less inspiring when it comes to the reoccurring by-product of underside downforce. No team, it seems, has been immune to porpoising over the past week.

The sensation of the car bouncing up and down as airflow stalls and reattaches caught teams off-guard during their private shakedowns and filming days. It’s caused floors to be replaced and is likely to have contributed to myriad oil leaks and pipe failures when components have been shaken to excess. It's also been an unwelcome development in the cockpit.

Aston Martin driver Lance Stroll reckoned it “rattled your brain” and it’s “not nice on the lower back”. Carlos Sainz Jr reported his Ferrari to have been chattering by between 30 and 40mm with each complete oscillation. Pierre Gasly called it “shocking”. Charles Leclerc, meanwhile, likened the jumping sensation to “turbulence on an aeroplane, going up and down the whole straight. I can't say it feels nice. It makes you a little bit ill.”

This must go down as a substantial negative when it comes to assessing the driving experience of the new 2022 machines. The concern also is that finding the optimum suspension geometry to eradicate porpoising won’t arrive in time for the higher speeds of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia - a concern given it was transpiring at sub 175mph in Spain.

Charles Leclerc, Ferrari F1-75

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

Gasly continued his assessment, saying: “It's just finding ways to go around it. We know that in certain circumstances in the race - safety cars, tyre pressure dropping etc - we may face this and it may actually become an issue in the race. We'll have to think about all these different situations where things will get a lot worse.”

However, the general prediction from the paddock is porpoising - which Russell said has the potential to be “a real safety concern” - needn’t hang around beyond half a dozen races as engineers get to grips with an issue that last reared its head in the early 1980s.

For the time being, there is at least one key area where the jury is out on what it’s like to drive the 2022 machines.

"It is quite interesting, because I'll say from three seconds to one second behind the car in front, you actually can follow closer" Charles Leclerc

The return of ground effect is fundamental to the pursuit to increase levels of overtaking in F1. The objective has been to massively reduce the amount of grip-killing dirty air that each car creates by doing away with the increasingly complex wings and bargeboards. It is hoped that the much-reduced turbulent wake will allow cars to follow one another more closely to put them in prime position to lunge past an opponent. Nose-to-tail running in Spain, however, was a rare commodity.

From his limited exposure to sitting in the slipstream of a rival, Leclerc gave this review: “It is quite interesting, because I'll say from three seconds to one second behind the car in front, you actually can follow closer.

“From one second to five-tenths, I will say it's similar to the feeling I had last year. Then from five-tenths to extremely close, this is much better than last year. It is nice. It's interesting. I'll have to do a bit more laps behind a car. But it's looking good for now."

Lance Stroll, Aston Martin AMR22

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

Russell and Norris were in broad agreement that following, particularly through corners, has been improved. But there is a flipside. Where the car in front is no longer creating an abundance of dirty air through the corners, nor is it punching a massive hole in the atmosphere to enhance the slipstream effect down the straights and create overtaking that way.

Russell continued: “You obviously need that delta on the straight to be able to overtake because you can only really overtake at the end of the straight into the corner. I think we can follow closer but, from what we’ve seen, the slipstream effect is definitely less effective.

“I got right up behind Lando and I was a car length or two behind him and I couldn’t… I didn’t catch him down the straights. So that was slightly concerning.”

Additionally, the move to 18-inch tyres has resulted in kerbs and bumps transmitting much more of a jolt through to the cockpit plus the bigger rubber obscures more of the road. Sight lines have been forced to change further for those used to a high-rake car - drivers now feel they sit lower in the car as the move to ground-effect has dropped the ride height at the rear most significantly.

In these early, exciting days for the new era of F1, the cars are far from receiving universal praise. Their characteristics in the high-speed corners earn the biggest merit, and the porpoising conundrum isn’t expected to last. Meanwhile, laziness in the low-speed turns is the main detractor so far. But all of these new traits have at least changed up the formula.

Sainz Jr reported: “It feels different. The cars are quite a bit different to last year, and you are faced with different challenges when you drive them… the whole process of having to feel it, having to put it on the limit and how the car reacts to different inputs."

Until their muscle memory adjusts to these new techniques, the shake-up alone adds an injection of excitement for those fortunate and skilled enough to be taking on the driving challenge.

Daniel Ricciardo, McLaren MCL36

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images