Why F1’s fake war is underway and the real battle is to come

Formula 1’s launch season is go. And while all we have seen so far is an early development render of the 2022 Haas, don’t expect too many more answers about the season ahead despite all the reveals coming in the next two weeks. This year, more than any in recent history, F1 teams are as in the dark as fans and media about just what to expect from their cars ahead of them hitting the track. That is going to be the catalyst for both hot air and diversion.

The all-new rules for 2022 have left each team playing a guessing game about whether or not they have done a good enough job in recovering performance and unlocking the secrets of the new semi-ground effect challengers. As teams have been locked in isolation over the winter working away to push their designs across the line, they will have a pretty good understanding of where the keys to performance are, and where specifically they feel they have made good gains.

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But not revealing your true hand just yet is of vital importance at this time of year. The name of the game in F1 isn’t just about making your own car quick: it’s about making sure your rivals are slower. So what you don’t want to do right now is give away your best ideas, leaving the opposition enough time to copy them and get them on their own cars. 

Although teams this year will not have the luxury of being able to roll out year-old cars and pretend, with a few tweaks, that they are new models, we can certainly expect them to be fairly ruthless in playing things close to their chest. For some that will mean just issuing renders of their car: which offer only some outline general concepts of the 2022 models and don’t include any of the key details that will ultimately make the difference between the front and the back of the field. 

If you remember how Mercedes last year deliberately kept its floor edge design off its launch model; think of that approach being taken to the nth degree. So no secrets being offered up on wings, floors or those Venturi tunnels.

And don’t put it past one or two of the more competitive-minded operations to throw a few deliberate curveballs in there. A quick 15-min illustration tweak to include a made-up concept on a rendered car can have big benefits in being a distraction for other teams when they take note of it, and then have to spend time working out if it’s real or a fake. Plus, in an era of the cost cap and severely limited aerodynamic development time, if you can get another team to burn some cash or do a bit of a development on something that is a dead-end project, then that’s time and resource not devoted to going faster.

F1's render of what it expects the 2022 cars to look like, but how close to reality will it be?

Photo by: Formula 1

Even for teams like McLaren and Mercedes that will be having real car launches (yes, remember those!), they still will not offer many more answers about what is to come. Not only may they choose not to reveal the latest iteration of aero updates, but they will also certainly be blanking off or hiding from view the critical bits of the car they don’t want their rivals to know about just yet. In fact, final concepts (especially if teams know they have a best spec for the opening race) may not be unleashed until the second test in Bahrain or even opening practice for the first race.

So, while on the technical front we aren’t going to have a clear picture of what the teams are up to for a while yet, equally they are going to know even less about where they sit in the pecking order. Starting from a clean sheet of paper, teams have no real reference to fall back on and work out what sort of performance targets they need to hit. There is not a baseline of the previous year’s model to give you a rough idea of where you need to sit; and so far the only level that has been discussed if of teams being able to match the lap times of the 2021 cars.

But are messages like that the result of teams bigging up their own work? Or are they deliberately feeding information that plays down what they have achieved, so some rivals feel more comfortable right now being at a low base?

"I must confess, I can't remember such a big change in the last 20 years or more. So it's a really big one" Simone Resta

The reality is that none of the teams right now know for sure where things stack up and just where they will slot into the order. Sure, some may have noticed that development gains have tailed off so they are hitting a downforce ceiling, but if they are still chipping away now and adding on those downforce points, then that will leave them unsure of just where the limits are.

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What this all means is that there are going to be some nervous evenings ahead for teams as the countdown to Barcelona ticks on. They will be pouring over the images of the other cars; trying to pick their way through the bluffs and the details to better understand what each of them is thinking.

But the reality is that until the cars are out on track, and running in anger for the first time, nobody has a clue about how things will shake out: which ultimately is a brilliant thing for everybody on the outside. As Haas technical director Simone Resta explained yesterday, this year is certainly offering something unique.

All eyes will be on what Adrian Newey and his contemporaries have designed in time for pre-season testing

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

“I've been really participating in a lot of launches in different positions and, I must confess, I can't remember such a big change in the last 20 years or more,” he smiled. “So it's a really big one.

“There's a lot of expectation and there's a lot of uncertainties about what the others will do. We’ve been working on this so hard for so long, that all of us are really all uncertain about what to expect in the winter test. This is a very important point for all you guys [in the media], and for the fans, etc. It is really something that is adding a lot of attention and interest in our sport. So I think it is a very nice feeling to be there and to wait for the day to arrive.”

That’s when the fake launch war ends and the real battle begins.

Haas kicked off launch season by becoming the first team to reveal renders of its 2022 F1 car

Photo by: Haas F1 Team