Rule changes for the 2012 Formula 1 season

Let’s take a look at the changes introduced by the FIA for the 2012 season. The most important among them are:-

The Nose

There has been a lot of talk about the platypus nose since the Caterham CT01 was introduced in late January. It being the first car to be launched, people were shocked to see such an ugly nose after so many years of relatively beautiful cars. But as the first few months of the year have passed, our eyes have become accustomed to it. What the rules state is that- 1950mm from the front end of the cockpit the nose should have a 75mm drop from 625mm to 550mm in the space of 150mm. In previous years (after the major rule changes in 2009), the chassis could have a maximum height of 625mm anywhere in front of the cockpit. This rule change has been interpreted in two different ways – one way by McLaren and Marussia who have smooth noses and the other way by all the other ten teams who have stepped noses. Most of the teams have chosen to keep the chassis height till 1950mm in front of the cockpit to 625mm because it is very important to have as much airflow beneath the car as possible. On the other hand, McLaren have been able to design the smooth nose because they have regularly developed low height chassis and that helped them to slope the nose well below the maximum height specified. They have found some other way to compensate for the lower amount of airflow beneath their car.

The main reason behind this rule change is driver safety. In case of a T-Bone crash, if the nose is lower in height there is lesser chance of the driver in the car which is sideways, to get hurt. Another reason for the lower nose is to prevent cars taking off- similar to what happened to Mark Webber’s car after hitting Heikki Kovalainen at the 2010 European Grand Prix in Valencia.

The Exhausts

The main reason behind the restriction on the blown exhausts was to slow the Red Bulls down and in that, it can be said, the FIA has been quite successful uptil now. The 2011 cars featured the mechanism of blowing the exhaust gases towards the diffuser, hence generating significant amount of downforce. This year’s regulations make it compulsory for the exhausts to be much forward on the car as compared to last year, and they must point at least 10 degrees upwards compared to the floor of the car. These regulations make the current exhausts’ configuration somewhat similar to those of the periscope exhausts seen some years earlier. Apart from this, engine mapping has also been restricted to a significant extent to minimize off-throttle blowing of exhaust gases. The comparison of 2011 and 2012 exhausts has been done in more detail here.

Flexing of the Front Wings

We saw the front wings flex a lot especially on the Red Bulls throughout last season and on the Ferraris late last season. When the front wings flexed and drooped downwards, which can be termed as positive rake, the area between the wing surface and the ground decreased, hence speeding up the airflow and lowering the pressure beneath the car, hence increasing down-force. In 2011, under 1KN load, the wings were allowed to flex upto 20mm. But the FIA was not happy and Charlie Whiting explained why – “As a result of this the teams were testing wings until they found a design that deflected 19.9mm under a 1kN load. Our allowances are only a guideline for us and we felt the teams were operating outside the spirit of the rules and clearly designing their wings with flexibility in mind”. Now, under the same load, the wings are allowed to flex only upto 10mm. This has reduced the possibility to run highly flexing front wings during the race weekends.

Safety Car

Cars that have been lapped are allowed to unlap themselves during the safety car period. This has been done to prevent slower cars from interfering in the battle between the frontrunners at the restart after the Safety Car comes in.

Free Practice

All teams are now allowed to use all the allocated sets of tyres during the first day of free practice during a race weekend. Earlier only three sets were allowed. Also, if both the Friday sessions are wet, one set of dry tyres are allowed to be carried over to Saturday.

Race time limit

The total race time limit including all stoppages is 4 hours and only the race-running time is 2 hours. The 4 hour limit has been introduced after last year’s Canadian Grand Prix stretched for a marathon 4 hours and 4 minutes!!

Defending while racing

A car which is front cannot change its direction more than once while defending. Just before the corner, if the car in front is coming back on the racing line to defend, it must leave a car’s gap between it and the kerb.

In-season Testing

This year a 3-day in-season testing session at Mugello during May 1-3 has been introduced. In-season testing comes back after quite a few years. This extra testing session has been provided so that the teams can try out the major updates (before applying them in qualifying and race trim) which are generally introduced at the Spanish Grand Prix in Catalunya, the start of the European season. To keep the total official testing time(barring the young drivers test) limited to 16 days in a year, the number of pre-season tests have been decreased from four to three this year.