22/03/2022
NEWS STORY
Though pleased with the first race under the new rules, F1 motorsport director, Ross Brawn urges the sport not to get ahead of itself.
Though there was a segment during yesterday's Grand Prix that clearly fell into the 'same old, same old' category, as the field settled down into a procession, other than Max Verstappen's meltdown, and subsequent retirement, along with teammate Sergio Perez, the race did have its moments.
Whether the rules overhaul has improved the show is not a decision that can be made after one race, but the man behind them is pleased with what he's seen so far.
"It's a sample case of one, so let's not get ahead of ourselves," he told Sky Sports. "But we're seeing no negatives today, which is a great thing.
"I think once the drivers have debriefed and the FIA start to look at all the data, we can see how far we've been able to move," he added. "But the old cars were horrible, so we've been able to make that step.
"In the past we've always focused on cost, safety, performance, but now we should focus on raceability because there's never been any attention paid to it. We need to do that now, we need to do that in the future.
"We've shown that the raceability of the car has to be a strong consideration going forward," he continued. "It's not just one solution and we're going to stop. We need to keep this process up. We need to keep working at understanding how we can make great racing cars and continue to develop that direction.
"When you make different regulations you can have big performance differences when you get going again," said the poacher turned gamekeeper. "But what I'm very pleased about is that the changes we made, we managed to place restrictions in certain areas which means the whole field is quite close.
"There's a few teams who have got it wrong," he admitted, "and I'm sure they'll come back quickly, but at the front I think we've got three really strong front-running teams."
While DRS still played a significant role, thereby in some ways negating the ability to discern how much of a difference the rules overhaul has had, Brawn says he is happy with the various wheel-to-wheel battles he observed.
"I'm pretty pleased," he said, "and I think when you watch the cars racing you can see they can race. They're not just having a go at each other for one lap and then they have to back off. There was no backing off to save the tyres today, they were on top of each other the whole time. Which is credit to Pirelli, but also a credit to the type of cars we have."
Asked about Ferrari's 1-2, the Briton having been part of the Scuderia's team that dominated during the Schumacher era, he replied: "It is pleasing to see them competitive. But they're not a mile away, Red Bull will get it right and find a few tenths and I'm sure Mercedes will sort it out. I think we're going to have a glorious year."
Check out our Sunday gallery from Bahrain, here.