Formula 1’s new rules for the 2021 season won’t force all the teams’ cars to look alike, according to the FIA’s Nikolas Tombazis.

Several F1 teams have raised concerns that the regulations are so restrictive that cars designed under them will look largely the same.

Speaking at the presentation of the new rules for the 2021 F1 season, Tombazis showed images of several different designs which would be legal under the proposed regulations (above).

Tombazis confirmed there have been minor changes to the regulations to increase the scope for teams to produce visibly different designs.

“There’s been quite a lot of discussion about visual differentiation of the cars and shape differentiation,” he said. “There was, in the last month and a half, some initiatives taken to increase a bit certain areas of differentation.

“So we do expect there will be numerous areas where cars will look different to each other and can look different to each other: The nose, the front wing, the engine intake, the sidepod inlet, the sidepod shape itself, the rear wing, there’s quite a lot of areas where were see still notable performance and visual differentiation.”

The rules have been made more restrictive in order to reduce the amount of turbulence the new cars produce. Tombazis said the 2021 cars will lose far less of their downforce when running closely behind another car, compared to current designs.

“We have of course restricted some areas because there are some areas that are key to this wake performance,” he said, “and we don’t to throw away that massive advantage.”

Image: Formula 1 via YouTube

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2021 F1 season