24/11/2023
NEWS STORY
Final meeting of the Formula 1 Commission of 2023 sees support for an update to the Sprint format and the scrapping of plan to ban tyre blankets.
Today's meeting at the Yas Marina Circuit was chaired by FIA Single-Seater Director Nikolas Tombazis and Formula 1 President and CEO Stefano Domenicali, as other topics up for discussion included future tyre strategy and driver cooling.
The commission gave overall support for an update to the Sprint Format for 2024 to further rationalise the weekend by separating Sprint activities from those for the Grand Prix.
The final calendar for the 2024 Sprint events will be published in the coming weeks, in the meantime the Sporting Advisory Committee will work through specific details, particularly regarding timing and parc fermé regulations, for a final proposal to be presented to the commission for the first meeting of 2024.
In terms of wet weather/spray-reduction tests, the commission members acknowledged the importance of the project, and a further test will take place in spring of 2024.
This test will use a cover design that completely envelopes the tyre, in order to establish a proof of concept for the wheel cover with the cars and help define the future direction of the project.
The commission also agreed that the direction for development for future tyres should be focused on reducing issues of overheating and improving the raceability of the tyres, and therefore the decision was taken to keep tyre blankets for 2025 and remove the relevant appendices to the sporting and technical Regulations that required a further decision to be taken in July 2024.
Following the trial of an Alternative Tyre Allocation (ATA) at two events this season, the commission elected to stay with the standard 13 sets of dry tyres for 2024, with the relevant sections of the regulations regarding ATA to be removed.
Following the extreme temperatures experienced during the Qatar Grand Prix, the commission approved updates to the technical regulations to permit a scoop to increase driver cooling to be fitted to the cars. Additional analysis is being carried out for supplementary cooling options for more extreme conditions.
A safety-related update to the technical regulations was approved, mitigating the danger created by metallic components in the floor, should they become detached, by limiting their mass and number. Other minor updates to the 2024 technical and sporting regulations were approved by the commission.
The commission approved further refinements regarding the exclusion of Sustainability Initiative Costs from the Financial Regulations. This specifically refers to costs that are attributable to defining and identifying sustainability objectives and the strategy envisaged to achieve these objectives, and the monitoring, collation and production of reports to measure progress against carbon footprint and emissions targets and overall ESG sustainability objectives.
Finally, the commission agreed that no work may be carried out on the development of a car for the 2026 season before the start of 2025.
Check out our Friday gallery from Yas Marina here.