re: Formula 1 2022 Preseason Thread

I'm not ready to jump on the "they all look the same" train just yet. With these new regs no team is going to let anything slip that may tip their hand to an advantage. Treat these launches as livery reveals and don't expect to see the real cars until testing, and even still don't be surprised if some teams show up to race 1 with some fancy tricks.

The Haas was just a rendering and has some questionable bits to it, and seeing some crying online that the Red Bull wasn't much more than a liveried up model car. No one is tipping their hand.

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Well, from what we've seen so far, it looks like the sidepods and the air intakes will look different, but the front and rear wings will look pretty similar among all the cars.

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In strict formula series where the cars have no need to be remotely similar to production cars, there is always a negentropic force that leads to homogenization of the grid. Where the formula dictates very similar power trains that produce horsepower and torque in a fairly narrow band and the curves are also fairly similar there is really one single solution that is best aerodynamically or at least the best one discovered at that point in time. Some things can't be changed quickly like wheelbase etc some other things are easier and quicker to incorporate.

So we may see some differences and out-of-the-box thinking but other teams will adjust their development in the directions that work based on the performance of other cars. Given enough time and development without changes in the rules, all cars will be very similar.

Also, wings are the easiest thing to mask in live pictures. They could easily show generic ones and attach the "real" wings at some point before the lights go green on the race season. Outside of the really poor teams I don't expect to see the actually car with all the trickery at the launch, even the poor teams will likely be obfuscating the truth as much as possible.