Honda RA619H power unit, 2019

FIA tweaks 2022 F1 technical rules and sets target for deal on 2026 power unit

2022 F1 season

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The FIA has approved a series of changes to Formula 1’s sporting and technical rules at a meeting of the World Motor Sport Council today.

Among the changes are revisions to the power unit rules permitting teams to make temporary repairs when needed, which may allow them to avoid fitting replacement parts on some occasions. Teams will also be permitted to replace power units with newer specification parts under parc ferme conditions between qualifying and the race.

Another rules change has been made following a series of occasions on which teams nearly fell foul of maximum fuel temperature regulations. Teams will now be permitted to chill their fuel to 20C at races where particularly warm ambient temperatures are observed.

Two deflection tests applied to the rear wings have been altered. The beam wing was previously permitted to deflect by no more than 5mm when a 60N load was applied to it within a specific area. It must now deflect by no more than 3mm when a 150N load is applied to its trailing edge.

The rear wing mainplane trailing edge will still be subjected to a 200N load for testing, and may now deflect by no more than 3mm along the line the load is applied on, rather than by 2mm vertically as before.

Revisions have also been made to the restrictions on car limitations during the tyre tests teams are conducting for Pirelli this year. A new clause in the rules states: “No test parts, test software, component changes or set-up changes will be permitted which give any sort of information to the competitor that is unrelated to the tyre test.

“Mechanical set-up changes, driver control changes, software and component changes are only permitted if they are necessary for the correct evaluation of the tyres or to complete the tyre test,” it adds. Ferrari was found to have used two different, but legal, floor specifications at a tyre test earlier this year.

The FIA also announced it intends to finalise the 2026 power unit regulations ahead of the next World Motor Sport Council meeting. While this will take place in October, RaceFans understands an agreement is expected well before then, potentially within the coming weeks.

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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25 comments on “FIA tweaks 2022 F1 technical rules and sets target for deal on 2026 power unit”

  1. For the love of Senna, stop making rule changes in the middle of a season! Stop!

    1. Half the time Senna wanted rule changes in his favor during the weekend. F that guy.

      1. I should have known you can’t make a fun play on words by without someone sour swooping in to drop their hot take over it. Oh well.

        1. For Prost’s sake, nobody seem to understand attempts on funny anymore.
          Thankfully, you didnt say “For the love od God”, otherwise would say: please, leave religion out of F1.

  2. Barry Bens (@barryfromdownunder)
    29th June 2022, 18:51

    Would’ve thought they’d focus on front-wings bending, not so much as near the rear. Watch any on-board and its clear which one flexes more.

    1. Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari flex insanely.

    2. My reading of it is that they eased up on the rear and tightened the test on the front wings.

  3. Interesting & unexpected.

  4. Why do they still have engine allocation rules or any other parts allocation rules? Why can’t they just use the cap as the ruling for all limits, let them work within the cap to develop engines (allows them to keep inventing), repair/replacement (mistakes in design or damage) and penalize that overage? Let the teams decide when and how to deploy new or needed stuff. I hate when I see any team get a penalty because they had to replace a major part that is needed to put the show on. With the cap in place, which I like to a degree, the allocation rules present double jeopardy and unneeded and ruin the show.

    1. Agreed, once the cap was put in place, they should have relaxed all the rules that were in place to “save money”

    2. Engine cost’s aren’t included in the budget cap due to how different the costs of supply can be depending on if your a full manufacturer, A manufacturer backed team or a customer team having to pay for the supply.

      A customer team like Williams for example will be paying full price to be supplied with an engine while a team that has manufacturer backing may be getting a discount (If they are having to pay anything at all) & the full manufacturer teams may have different cost’s for supply & development.

      And then you have engine development costs which is spending not every team will need to make as customers or manufacturer backed teams aren’t having to spend anything on engine development.

      1. Fair enough…but, what I’m saying and mostly concerned with, is the allocation being the problem. Adding the cost of units to the cap will not have any bearing on customers. If that money exists outside of the cap and is usable, FIA can bump the cap up a little to accommodate the removal of the allocation rules. If the suppler makes an update, they would risk the cap, the customer pays for that update in some way that is equal…so both risk cap. Plus, the customer does not have to buy the update, especially if other areas are making up the difference. (Vettle’s 4 WDCs, Renault was a reliable engine but no one praised its power like the Merc era). It’s the pinnacle, let them have a little space back.

  5. Valid from when?

    1. @ricod Presumably with immediate effect.

  6. oh look a rule changed designed to help certain teams who have engines that aren’t reliable. can’t wait to see the outrage over this, especially with the meltdown of some f1 fans over the fia rule change over porpising….. oh wait they only get upset if they think its helping Mercedes. cos I can’t remember much outrage when the fia banned DAS, fric suspensions, qualifying modes, letting redbull change rear wings then punishing Mercedes when theirs got damaged, changing the 2013 tyres to help redbull mid-season, changing aero rules to help teams who ran high rake cars last year, also when michael masi made up his own rules in abu dubai, not black flagging max verstappan for break testing lewis Hamilton in Saudi Arabia & giving him a pointless 10 second time penalty that cost him nothing…… not too mention the 2022 rule changes that seemed too ban everything Mercedes had perfected especially their suspension system. But hey at least max will finally be able to win his first World title this year.

    1. You seem to have a very selective memory, ads. Or just a very poor one.

    2. ads, it seems you are very much focusing on the “help” RBR got without taking into account RBR got rule changes going against them just as well. DDD, exhaust-blown diffuser, ban on free use of DRS during qualifying at any given time. Etcetera, etcetera. Selective memory and apparently not much outrage over those either. You also skip over the idea that Mercedes could enjoy a very long period of relatively small changes. Or that their early and huge lead in the beginning of the regulations period was actually protected and in part locked in thanks to the limited number of development tokens available.

      But they’re all against Mercedes, right?

      Now, to pick some of your arguments:

      letting redbull change rear wings then punishing Mercedes when theirs got damaged

      Non-issue. Hamilton qualified with a non-compliant wing. Done.

      changing the 2013 tyres to help redbull mid-season

      This is completely misrepresenting the facts. First of all, Red Bull and Vettel were leading the championships after Canada, with big margins (especially it being so early in the season). Then Silverstone happened and it was pretty clear something needed to be done. Those tyres were simply not safe.

      The 2013 tyre changes were NOT done to help Red Bull. It’s disingenious to state as if it is truth.

      changing aero rules to help teams who ran high rake cars last year

      Again, misrepresenting. They were introduced to peg back downforce by 10%, in order to limit the ever higher load being put on the tyres. If you read at pre-2021-season analysis by actual aerodynamical experts, then you will see that it was not a foregone conclusion that Mercedes would be hurting the most. Giorgio Piola, e.g., wrote the following:

      If you look at it objectively it seems that both short wheelbase/high rake and long wheelbase/low rake philosophies are going to take a hit then.

      But, how much will depend on the reliance each has on the aerodynamic functionality of the outgoing fully enclosed holes on their floor and diffuser, when compared with the losses they’ll initially accrue from the trimming down of the floor, brake ducts and diffuser.

      The thing to remember though, is whilst 10% was the FIA’s target, it’s not a figure that will be representative for every team.

      The same can be said if you take each change in isolation, with the brake duct winglets being trimmed back likely to hurt one team more than another too.

      Right now there is not a clear answer as to who comes off worse, but there seems no doubt it is going to have an impact. Maybe there is a scenario where both come off badly, and they fall back into the chasing pack…

      All the rest is hindsight.

      not too mention the 2022 rule changes that seemed too ban everything Mercedes had perfected especially their suspension system

      The 2022 rule changes were known years in advances and didn’t take into account the level of “perfection” Mercedes would be at in 2021. FUrthermore, we can say the exact same about 2013 that “seemed to ban everything Red Bull had perfected”.

      Rule changes of this magnitude change up the order, Mercedes had every chance to be up there too by coming up with the best concept.

      But hey at least max will finally be able to win his first World title this year.

      Yeah, his second, and nothing your ilk says will ever change that.

      And I won’t even go into your references on 2021. Because it’s not like that was one-sided.

  7. Did they just approve teams using a special quali engine? What could possibly go wrong!

    1. The Dolphins
      30th June 2022, 5:01

      Teams will also be permitted to replace power units with newer specification parts under parc ferme conditions between qualifying and the race.

      I’d have to see the official wording but this does seem there could be a quali- and race-spec engine scenario.

  8. I thought they couldn’t change technical regs in the middle of season without all the teams agreeing?

    1. @grat Unless on safety grounds, which doesn’t seem the case here.

  9. OK I’m stumped.

    Who does this impact and why has it been done?

    1. @dbradock this mostly helps those teams who have had engine reliability issues

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