The FIA’s technical working group has approved a series of rules changes for the 2020 F1 season.

The tweaks target fuel flow tricks, ensure drivers are controlling their own starts, and require teams to display larger car numbers on new ‘baby shark fins’. Craig Scarborough (@Scarbs) explains what’s new.

Brake ducts classed as listed parts

Currently brake ducts, although partly described as ‘bodywork’ in the technical regulations, are not counted as the aerodynamic bodywork under the listed parts rules.

Teams must produce certain parts of the car in order to be classified as a constructor, while other parts can be bought in from other teams or outside suppliers. The core hardware required to make the car are termed ‘listed parts’ in the rules.

Currently Haas take the full ‘listed parts’ entry to F1, producing the minimum allowed by the rules and buying everything else in from Ferrari. Toro Rosso take a lighter approach to the same rules through Red Bull Technology.

At present the listed parts are the core structure of the car: monocoque, crash structures and aerodynamic bodywork. The latter, oddly, also includes the cooling radiators.

The change to include brake ducts in the listed parts regulations make sense, as these partly are now overtly aerodynamic, as well as their function of cooling the brakes and directing heat to/from the wheels for tyre temperature management. For 2020 this rule should only affect Haas, requiring the team to design and make their own brake ducts front and rear, rather than take Ferrari’s parts. This would not have a significant impact on the team’s workload and performance.



Changes to front wing endplate construction

The front section of the front wing endplate has been subject to specific carbon fibre construction (prescribed laminate) for many years. This has been to prevent front wings damaging other cars and also to reduce sharp carbon fibre debris from broken front wings.

However the new rule sets out to include other hardware around the front of the endplate, items such as fasteners and inserts. It’s all well and good ensuring the carbon fibre is made of a safe constructor, but that benefit is nullified if the same isn’t true of the metal hardware inside.

The new rules remove such metal hardware from the front 30mm of the endplate to prevent any unwanted damage from wing accidents. There’s no real impact to the teams for such a rule, in performance or construction. Some teams do have metal skid plates bonded into this area, which would need repositioning, but with little impact on their protection of the endplate’s under-surface.

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Front wing profile transitions

This is a detail rule change to the way the five front wing elements can merge or diverge.

Although the rules state the front wing can have no more than five elements, teams are free to split one element into two elements at certain points on the wing’s span, or vice versa, as long as the profile count remains at five. However the old regulation could be misinterpreted as a way to merge the centre neutral wing section into the five outer elements.

This rule change enforces a technical directive issued last year which prevents any attempt to do this by defining it only affects the wing geometry 250mm outboard of the car’s centre line, which is where the outer five element wing starts.

‘Baby shark fins’ for engine numbers

Shark fins are back! Although not a technical rule for performance reasons, this is a marketing-led rule change. It has always been hard to read the driver’s race number on the car and on the side of the car, with the ban on shark fins from two years ago, there has been little real estate on the engine cover to place the numbers.

Now the teams will have to create a tiny shark fin on the spine of the engine cover, as defined by the dimensions in the rules. This make a small shark fin similar that that McLaren have run this year and seen on the 2021 ‘India’ CFD concept car. As with any rule change, team will seek to find an advantage and having the small fin in this area down low ahead to the top rear wing, there could be some performance benefit to keep the wing working when the car is cornering.

Fuel volume outside survival cell

The power unit regulations have enforced a fuel flow restriction since 2014. To measure this there is a homologated fuel flow sensor inside the fuel tank allowing the FIA to record and enforce the 100kg/hr fuel flow limit.

However, there have been concerns that teams might be able accumulate fuel outside the fuel tank and, when the engine demands maximum fuel flow, exceed the flow limit. This accumulation could be used to deliver more than the FIA defined fuel flow.

For 2020 teams can only have 250ml of fuel outside the fuel tank, rather than the more generous current limit of 2,000ml. This should reduce the fuel outside the tank, to simply what’s in the fuel lines, high pressure GDI (gasoline direct injection) pump and fuel rails. There were technical directives issued post-2014 to limit this sort of loophole being exploited, so clearly some engine manufacturers have been accused of such trickery.

Engine materials

A less sensitive subject than the fuel volume rule change, this is a simple rewording to reflect the method of manufacture of the V6 engine’s basic structure; sump, cylinder heads and cylinder head cam covers.

While some of these parts may still start out as castings, its more common for a lot of these parts to be machined from aluminium blocks, so the rule deletes the cast or wrought wording, as these specific manufacturing techniques do not need to be enforced. There should be little to no impact from this rule change.

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Clutch control

This detailed change defines exactly what the FIA want from the clutch control paddle son the steering wheel. The rules to define clutch usage at the start of the race have been annually updated to reduce software control of the clutch release, such that is only the driver’s modulation of the clutch paddle that controls the race start.

Some drivers have two clutch paddles, though only one can used at the race start. Having two paddles allows the driver easier access to pull the clutch in during a spin to prevent the engine stalling. However some drivers prefer a single paddle on one side of the wheel. If there are two paddles these must mirror each other and be mapped with the same software settings, so that one clutch paddle cannot be used differently to the other.

Specifically, the new regulation further defines the paddles must only be pulled, not pushed, and have no more than 80mm of movement in one direction. During the clutch paddle travel the clutch movement must match the paddle movement, with little ECU interference. The rule details that the driver’s request for clutch release must deliver 90% of the engine’s torque for the majority of the clutch paddle travel, so that the release isn’t phased or delayed to aid the car’s launch off the grid.

Additionally, any means to define a point on the paddle’s travel is not allowed, either by ‘detents’ built into the pivot mechanism of the driver being able to align their fingers/paddle with other paddles or hardware on the steering wheel. Some teams used have the clutch bite point set up, so that the clutch paddle is aligned with the adjacent gear shift paddle, as an aid for the driver.

By further defining and restricting the clutch control rules, the race start is under greater control by the driver and not by outside of software assistance. This could lead to slower and less consistent starts, but every rule change that has taken electronic control away from the car (e.g. clutch or gearshift) and given it to the driver, generally sees the driver perform the same functions just as well and consistently as before.

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Rear view mirrors

After mirror position and mounting rule changes for this year opened up a new area for aerodynamic exploitation by the teams, new rules have been worded to defined and limit the excess seen on the some of the 2019 cars. This is a nearly completely reworded set of regulations to define the mirror surface, its housing and mountings. Although teams have exploited the mirror rules, the performance gain is minimal and no team would likely lose any obvious performance from the rule change.

Cockpit padding

Affecting the horseshoe padding around the driver’s head, this rule simply defines finer points to the part’s construction.

Adapting cockpit rim tests for the presence of the Halo

As part of the load testing of the monocoque, this rule is again a simple revision of the old regulation, in this case as a result of the Halo.

F1 technology