Nico Hulkenberg believes the 2022 F1 cars might not improve closer racing as predicted

Former F1 driver and Aston Martin reserve Nico Hulkenberg believes the new generation of cars being introduced in 2022 season might not produce any better racing than the outgoing generation.

Hulkenberg is skeptical about the new sweeping aerodynamic regulations that were introduced to combat one of the F1’s biggest gripes in recent years – the lack of organic wheel-to-wheel racing.

The German driver, after testing the new car in Aston Martin’s simulator, feels that the driving experience isn’t all that dissimilar to current generation cars. In his blog “Hulk Report” posted on social media, the former Le Mans winner wrote:

“From my initial experience, however, the new cars are pretty damn fast and not necessarily slower than the last generation. The driving experience hasn't changed that much either, at least in the simulator.

“It will be very interesting to see whether these cars can really follow the car in front better. In the simulator, the cornering speeds are extremely high, so the risk of “dirty air" is still given and it´s difficult for me to imagine that following another car comfortably at these speeds will be easy.”

Despite his initial impressions of the new cars, Hulkenberg hopes to be “pleasantly surprised” once the season gets underway.

F1’s “Dirty Air” problem

F1 cars have become ever more sophisticated in the last two decades, as teams learnt more and developed new technologies chasing performance.

One of the biggest changes between the current generation FI cars and cars from the late 90s is their “aerodynamic efficiency”. As teams began to use simulations and wind tunnels starting in the noughties, the cars have started to become more complex than most aircraft in terms of how they utilize air to produce something that is key to a car’s performance – downforce.

The downforce is the opposite force of lift— the force used by aircraft to stay afloat in the air. Downforce helps to generate more grip by forcing the car into the ground as it gains more speed.

An array of increasingly sophisticated “aero” parts, such as winglets, bargeboards, vortex generators, and more, are used by teams to “channel air around the car in an efficient manner to produce maximum downforce.

While this has resulted in a spectacular increase in “cornering speeds” – the cars from the 2020 season were the fastest cars ever produced in the sport's history – it also has had unintended consequences.

The aero parts, while helping a car in fresh air produce an astonishing amount of downforce, also leave a trail of “dirty air” – disturbed uneven air that is less useful in producing downforce.

As a result, a car following another one closely will struggle to produce its maximum downforce, and therefore will lose grip. This is especially noticeable at high speeds and can often cause the following driver to “lose” a lot of performance.

This means that closer racing without the aid of DRS (Drag Reduction System) has become nearly impossible in F1.

The 2022 regulations aim to fix that problem by introducing a series of measures that ban FI teams from developing aero that produces “dirty air”. The new cars will generate most of their downforce from “ground effect” – produced by the underside of the car rather than by wings and aero parts on the surface of the car.

FOM (Formula One Management) hopes that the new regulations will once again allow F1 cars to closely follow each other through high speeds and produce organic overtakes – enough to potentially get rid of DRS in the future.