Why F1’s first glimpses of its new era proved inconclusive

As Max Verstappen partied until the sun came up following his dramatic world title win in Abu Dhabi, he was celebrating what he called his “final achievement”. Verstappen always made clear that winning the world championship
 would not change his life: even in the immediate aftermath of his win, he repeated his feeling that since he had now accomplished what he had set out to do, any success beyond this would be a bonus. But a little under 48 hours after he finally made it to bed, Max was back in the cockpit and in 
full title defence mode.

Post-season testing in Abu Dhabi might lack the glamour of the race weekend, or the full-on intrigue of pre-season running in Spain or Bahrain but, in 2021, the two-day session was packed with portents of the far-reaching changes to come. Unlike the 2020 one-day ‘rookie’ test in Abu Dhabi, notable largely for the incongruous presence of Fernando Alonso, December’s running had a proper structure and greater meaning. It was the final opportunity for teams to gather
 data before the start of winter testing in February, when 
the much-anticipated new generation of cars will appear.

PLUS: Unpacking the technical changes behind F1 2022's rules shakeup

There were two elements to the testing at Yas Marina: 
2022 tyre running with ‘mule cars’ driven by members of 
the current grid; and rookie driver running in the 2021 cars 
on 2021 tyres, giving young drivers a rare on-track chance 
in current machinery. Naturally the teams weren’t allowed
 to test their 2022 cars, which will have been in the final
 stages of development. But they did get the chance to 
sample the 2022 Pirelli tyres, which are likely to be a key performance differentiator.

In line with the majority of other racing championships 
and trends within the wider automotive industry, the tyres
 are switching from 13-inch to 18-inch rims. It’s a change which will have far-reaching impacts on car performance because their grip, wear and heating characteristics will be different. The bigger wheels ask different questions of chassis dynamics, and there will be aerodynamic consequences too. Formula 2 went to 18-inch rims ahead of the 2020 season and F1 was supposed to follow in 2021 but, along with the changes to the technical regulations, this was deferred as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

All the testing of the new tyres so far has been completed using the so-called mule cars, modified versions of recent F1 cars which are meant to provide a closer representation of what the new cars will be like. Since the next generation of cars will generate much of their downforce differently, the mule cars offer a limited picture, but there’s still plenty to learn for both the teams and F1’s tyre supplier.

“The change is big, so any data, any elements they can collect is useful,” Mario Isola, the head of F1 and car racing at Pirelli, tells GP Racing over an espresso in the paddock amid the din of forklift trucks helping clear grand prix cargo. “They are not completely representative. For example, they are still using the brakes that are on the current cars. But this year [2022] cars will be heavier, so they can add the ballast in order to achieve that weight and the weight distribution.

Pirelli motorsport boss Isola was keen to stress the significance of the test, although acknowledged it would not be very representative

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

“They are getting data they can apply to the new car to understand how to balance it. The fact that they can collect the data in December with mule cars means that in January, they can work around this data, try to understand the tyres better, and make a better plan for the next version of the car.”

Nine of the 10 F1 teams worked with Pirelli through 2021 
by creating mules, which could be a modified version of
 any car from 2018 to 2021. McLaren and Aston Martin were the only teams to use their current cars for the mule baseline, while Alpine went back to its 2018 car – the Renault RS18 – believing there was little to gain by attempting to replicate the requirements for the 2022 car too closely.

“I don’t think we’ve tried to play with aero loads at all,” says Alan Permane, Alpine’s sporting director. “We’re taking any direct comparisons with a pinch of salt.”

The only team not to build a mule car was Williams, having taken the decision during its cash-strapped days before its acquisition by Dorilton in the summer of 2020.

"We can’t learn anything about the 2022 car at all, and we’re learning as much as we can about the tyres, and how they react to things like camber changes, pressure changes, the drivers warming them up, the steps between the compounds, and things like that" Alan Permane

“We chose to spend our resources on other things,” says Dave Robson, the team’s head of vehicle performance. That should have precluded Williams from taking part in the Abu Dhabi test,
but the rest of the field agreed to relax the rules so it could 
field a 2021 car for a young driver.

Missing the opportunity to run a mule car isn’t something Robson feels overly concerned about. He remains emphatic that the differences between the mules and the definitive 2022 car designs are too great for the data to be properly comparable. There are some parallels with the situation ahead of the 2017 season, the beginning of the ‘wide body’ era, when Pirelli used mules to evaluate its next-generation tyres across 
a handful of tests. The feeling then
 was that while the mules simulated weight accurately, they fell short in replicating downforce levels.

“They’re allowed to make modifications to try and mimic the downforce level they think they’ll have,” says Robson. “That relies on people a) predicting what they think they’re going to have successfully; and b) choosing to let the rest of the field know what they’re going to have. It’s not clear to me that it’s in many teams’ interests to do that.”

Williams decided against producing a mule car and instead gave junior driver Logan Sargeant his first F1 test in a 2021 car

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

Permane sees it a similar way. “It is pretty limited what we can learn,” he says. “We can’t learn anything about the 2022 car at all, and we’re learning as much as we can about the tyres, and how they react to things like camber changes, pressure changes, the drivers warming them up, the steps between the compounds, and things like that.”

The test marked the final chance for Pirelli to work with the teams on its 2022 tyres, having spent the past two years fine-tuning the product. The main goal of the new tyres is to ensure drivers can push more and not become bogged down in managing their pace constantly, a recurrent gripe with the 13-inch rubber.

The brief provided to Pirelli for the new generation of tyres was to resolve this issue, ensuring the tyres could be pushed more, and offer a mix of one- and two-stop strategies for races.


“We decided to develop a completely new family of compounds, with a wider working range and less overheating,” says Isola. “Drivers don’t want to manage tyres, they want to push.”

There is also a focus on improving the warm-up of the tyres, tying in with a fall in temperatures permitted for the tyre blankets ahead of a drive towards their removal by 2024.

Isola is confident the absolute performance of the 18-inch tyres will be in line with the 13-inch models. Pirelli has worked with the teams to gather simulations of where they expect their performance to be at both the start and the end of this season. Initial beliefs the new cars may be around five seconds per lap slower than the outgoing models have been quickly dispelled as teams find ways to claw back performance – Isola reckons they could be as little as 0.5 seconds off current lap times.

With such a large technical change looming, some drivers were uncertain of how crucial understanding the tyres would be amid the bigger picture. Charles Leclerc said the 18-inch tyres are only “a very small change compared to everything else on the car”, while Esteban Ocon cast doubt on the value of the Abu Dhabi running, believing it was “not going to be
 the most useful test”.

Leclerc believes the new 18-inch tyres are only a small change compared to the test of the car

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

But every aspect of car performance has an impact. A huge rate of development is expected over the next two seasons as teams learn which solutions work and which don’t. Every team has identified 2022 as an opportunity to reset the on-track order. Nailing the tyres – understanding what has to be done to optimise their performance and lifespan – will be important even if, right now, the drivers don’t necessarily see the value.

“When you are having a big change, the team that is quicker in understanding the tyres has a performance advantage –
that is clear,” says Isola. “Even with the product that is the same for everybody, the teams are working hard, and they put their engineering and resources to understand the tyres, because it is an advantage.”

The Abu Dhabi test was not only Piastri’s first opportunity to sample the A521 car from 2021, but also to drive one alongside other F1 cars on track

The test also offered a chance for teams to trial some future F1 technology. Despite efforts to keep it hush-hush, GP Racing’s eagle eyes spied McLaren running an LED wheel cover on the rear of Lando Norris’s car for a one-lap run early on the Wednesday morning. The wheel cover could be used as an additional marketing tool, or to display information such as track position or lap number via the LED lights.

“There are many possibilities,” says Isola. “You have the technology,
so it’s easy to program what you want to display.”

While Verstappen was on-track for the test, his 2021 championship rival Lewis Hamilton wasn’t present for either day of running – something planned well before the controversial title decider (he was receiving his Knighthood). It meant that George Russell was able to get two days under his belt with Mercedes ahead of starting his full-time gig this season.

PLUS: How Russell sees his place in the Mercedes-Hamilton F1 superteam

Russell was left “battered and bruised” driving a modified Mercedes W10 – the cockpit is slightly too small for his size 11 feet, as Russell discovered when he deputised for Hamilton (size 9) in Sakhir in 2020. While it was a “strange feeling” for him to be testing as a fully fledged Mercedes driver, he sees the benefits of the tyre running.

“These 18-inch Pirellis seem to be reacting pretty positively,” Russell says. “They do react differently to the 13-inch tyres that we’ve raced on previously. Let’s hope that carries through and see how they react with the new regulations.”

Russell enjoyed stepping into the W10 Mule

Photo by: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images

Russell wasn’t the only driver settling in with his new team. The man he has displaced, Valtteri Bottas, was given permission by Mercedes to test for Alfa Romeo in Abu Dhabi despite not having officially joined the team yet. Bottas donned an all-white race suit and a Christmas-themed helmet for the test, and made sure to slow down by the Mercedes garage after completing his first outlap before giving his old crew a wave from the cockpit, which was reciprocated cheerily.

Bottas’s 2022 team-mate, Guanyu Zhou, was the only driver in the test to go out in both the mule car and the 2021 car, a privilege afforded by his rookie status. Teams could only run the 2021 rookie car on one of the two days, meaning Zhou was in the C41 for Tuesday before moving to the C39 mule car on the Wednesday. Zhou completed 269 laps over two days, giving him the chance to adjust to Alfa Romeo’s systems and processes, as well as meeting his new team-mates.

PLUS: The ‘underestimated’ 2022 rookie set to make F1 history

For the remaining teams, the rookie running was a chance to give potential members of F1’s next generation a rare shot in a current car. Any private testing before 2022 had to be in cars at least two years old; pre-season testing, or practice sessions during race weekends, have been the only other opportunities for rookies to run in current cars, and that time is so valuable teams don’t give it up without significant financial motivation.

F2 champion Oscar Piastri conducted Alpine’s rookie running, serving as a taster of plans for his reserve role this year when he’ll be testing extensively while hoping for a promotion to a race seat in 2023. The Abu Dhabi test was not only Piastri’s first opportunity to sample the A521 car from 2021, but also to drive one alongside other F1 cars on track.

“It’s extremely valuable,” he says. “In my position, I know I’m doing more testing [in 2022], and I’ve done some testing previously. But a lot of the other F2 boys who were here today, it was their first time in an F1 car, and possibly their only test ever. For all of us young drivers, it’s a really good opportunity.”

PLUS: The F1 junior that has run out of places to prove himself

While some, such as Formula E champion Nyck de Vries, who drove for Mercedes, and Aston Martin simulator driver Nick Yelloly were no strangers to the test, others were continuing to build on their formative experiences in F1 cars, including F2 race winners Robert Shwartzman and Juri Vips. But for Liam Lawson and Logan Sargeant, Abu Dhabi represented a maiden F1 outing. In Sargeant’s case, it was the latest development in a whirlwind two months in which he has gone from almost giving up the F1 dream (and turning his focus to IndyCar ) to joining the Williams academy and landing a prime F2 seat with Carlin.

“It tops the best day of my racing career,” Sargeant says of the F1 test. “It was everything I expected plus more. The stopping power is like nothing I’ve felt before.”

Piastri logged laps ahead of taking on Alpine reserve driver duties

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

But it wasn’t just F2 drivers getting their first taste of F1. Inspired by Daniel Ricciardo’s bet with McLaren head honcho Zak Brown, which won Ricciardo a ride in an ex-Dale Earnhardt NASCAR, it was agreed in the early months of 2021 that IndyCar driver Patricio ‘Pato’ O’Ward – who races for the Arrow McLaren SP team Stateside – would get an F1 test if he won a race. O’Ward secured it in May with a win in Texas, paving the way for his appearance in Abu Dhabi.

Enthusiasm pours out of 22-year-old O’Ward, whose chat with GP Racing the day after his test is interjected with his own sound effects of downshifts, engine revs and, at one time, an excellent, deep-voice impression of Brown.
He is still buzzing from his test day, which he sums up as being “insane”. He jokes that it felt like his head was going to fall off at one stage as he dealt with the g-forces, but makes one thing very clear: he wants more. Much more.

"When you are having a big change, the team that is quicker in understanding the tyres has a performance advantage –
that is clear" Mario Isola

“There’s maximum two more years for me to be able to come into the F1 scene,” O’Ward says. “I will do everything I can to make it happen, because it is the top of the top. I’m going to push to my absolute maximum to make sure I leave nothing on the table, because you’ve got to take it. You’ve got to try, because if I don’t, I will regret it for the rest of my life.” It’s a bold statement for a driver who is enjoying decent success in IndyCar to set his sights so firmly on making an F1 switch.

It speaks not only to F1’s undisputed place as the pinnacle
of motorsport, but also how crucial the Abu Dhabi test running
is. Without these opportunities for youngsters, it would be hard for teams to find decent seat time for them, and may 
leave drivers such as O’Ward simply wondering what an F1 
car is like, or having to source substantial wads of cash to
 make a private test happen.

While it was a far cry from the glitz of the season finale which took place the previous weekend, the Abu Dhabi test helped give us some signs of F1’s future through tyres, technology and drivers. We need to wait a little longer to find out what the 2022 cars look like and the order in which they will stack up, but we’ve had plenty of insight to keep us going as the days tick by to launch season…

O'Ward was thrilled by his first F1 experience with McLaren

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images