Formula One to immediately close regulation 'loopholes' in 2021

Liberty Media

F1 will act quickly to close regulation 'loopholes' in 2021

Ross Brawn reveals how F1 will attempt to keep a level playing field from 2021

Sam Hall

Friday 7 February 2020 20:00

Formula One seek to close down the abilities of teams to exploit regulations loopholes from the 2021 season, introducing regulations that would negate the need for the unanimous agreement from all ten teams to make a mid-season regulation tweak.

A large part of Formula One, especially around launch season, is seeing how teams have found ways to work around the regulations to gain an advantage.

In a bid to keep things on a level playing field Formula One managing director and technical director Ross Brawn has laid out plans to close hopes in the regulations from 2021.

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"The governance in the past has been the teams have to all agree to make a change. We’re pushing through governance where we can make changes much more on short notice than at the present time,” Brawn told Formula1.com.

“If you exploit a loophole in the future, you can be shut down at the next race, which you could never do now. So the Brawn diffuser – as it happens, there were three teams that had it, so it would have carried on – but if one team stands out there with a solution that has never been conceived, and has never been imagined, and destroys the whole principle of what is trying to be done, the governance would allow, with sufficient support from the other teams, to stop it. This is a whole different philosophy.

“Then what happens is someone who has a loophole thinks, ‘Do I want to use it or do I want to tell the FIA about it as it wasn’t intended?’. You’ve found a loophole in the regulations and you turn up at the first race and the FIA say, ‘Sorry chap, that wasn’t intended, we’re going to hold a meeting now and if everyone agrees, apart from you, we’ll stop it’.”

Needing only nine of the ten teams to be in agreement is a slightly risky proposition because, as suggested by Brawn, if, for example, Red Bull and AlphaTauri turned up to the track with a hugely beneficial, it would likely be allowed to remain.

The concept is however an interesting one, and one which, if not itself exploited by those at the sharp end, could add an extra element of spice to the season.