The crucial tech changes F1 teams must adapt to in 2023

By:

Jake Boxall-Legge

Jan 26, 2023, 12:20 PM

Changes to the regulations for season two of Formula 1's ground-effects era aim to smooth out last year’s troubles and shut down loopholes. But what areas have been targeted, and what impact will this have?

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Last year represented a seismic change for Formula 1 and its approach to car design. The return of a ground-effects formula and all its trimmings was conceived to make the on-track product better for fans, at the expense of restricting overall freedom for the aerodynamicist to exploit.

After a close-run 2021 season, however, 2022 was largely one-way traffic in the championship stakes as Red Bull understood the new rules best. The RB18 gave Max Verstappen the ammunition to sweep to the title largely unchallenged, prompting questions as to why the FIA and F1 had bothered to change things up. But now that the engineers have a year's worth of experience with the new rules, convergence will surely start to close the field.

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Jake Boxall-Legge

Having studied Automotive Engineering with Motorsport at the University of Hertfordshire, West Country-born Jake's original ambition was to design racing cars. During a year between studies in which he accidentally rekindled a love of writing, he took up a Master's in Motorsport Engineering at Oxford Brookes. Halfway through his master's year, he was offered a place on the Autosport Academy, conducting occasional freelance duties before becoming the press officer for Formula 2 and GP3 in 2018. Autosport offered him a return to the fold later that year to serve as its Technical Editor. His voice appears on a number of videos and podcasts, and can often be found writing about terrible Formula 1 cars in excruciating detail. In his spare time, Jake enjoys baking and blames his failure to make it past the Great British Bake-Off interviews on his tenuous grasp on choux pastry. His dream is to open a brunch cafe - and his willingness to make outrageous puns in inappropriate situations has earned him the contempt of his colleagues.