The unconventional ways F1 launch season heightened anticipation for racing

We’re at the beginning of the end of one set of technical regulations – but seldom has there been so much at stake, and so much secrecy, in the early phases of a season which represents the off-ramp for an entire technical philosophy. The 2022 Formula 1 campaign may be The Great Reset but there’s plenty of intrigue right now.

The changes to the cars for this season may seem inconsequential on the face of it – a trim around the floor area the most obvious visual change – but they amount to a heap of lost downforce which requires teams to innovate to recoup that loss. Inevitably some ideas will prove more effective than others, and the less successful teams will rush to copy those better executions.

This season that rush is even more pressing because most teams will want to rebalance design resource towards next year’s cars as soon as possible. Mercedes owes much of its present dominance to a prudent strategic design to focus early on the shift to hybrid power; conversely, back in 2008 Ferrari and McLaren were so embroiled in a development war for that year’s titles they neglected preparations for the big changes in 2009, a season in which both underachieved.

Red Bull's RB16B with key features obscured

Photo by: Red Bull Racing/GP Racing

The smartest teams are looking to taper their efforts on the current cars early, which means hitting development hard straight away. For that reason, then, this year’s launch period has been marked by a high degree of secrecy.

We’re well accustomed to teams launching their cars in either dummy aero specs or ones so old as to be irrelevant, but this year some have gone to still greater lengths to disguise what they’re up to. Not that this has stopped the tawdry practice – especially prevalent on YouTube, where ‘monetisation’ rules – of certain mountebanks who offer sage ‘technical analysis’ of the images released by the teams… even though they bear scant resemblance to what will be tested, let alone raced.

Alpine’s Glitchy McGlitchface stream was at least functionally useful in terms of access to the senior personnel present; Aston Martin’s effort, heavy on celebs, light on lightness of touch, felt over-scripted and under-rehearsed

The pandemic has pushed launches into the online space, making for an unprecedented degree of stage management. Red Bull’s commitment to obfuscation bordered on obsessive: its ‘launch’ consisted of video footage of Sergio Perez in what was transparently a two-year-old car, plus static renders of the ‘actual’ RB16B with the new bits clearly blacked out.

Why so secretive? Well, as Renault chassis chief Pat Fry pointed out, he could look at a picture of crucial innovations around a rival’s back end and have similar concepts running in the windtunnel within a couple of days, with a view to having them on his car in the Bahrain test. This way nobody will be able to sign off copies until the season is in train.

Essentially, what we got ahead of testing was a series of livery launches with varying degrees of elaboration. Some teams simply issued renders or studio shots of their not-actual cars along with anodyne quotes from their drivers, the COVID-era equivalent of unveiling the car in the pitlane at Barcelona and then inviting everybody to bugger off and let them get down to business.

Aston Martin's launch featured Hollywood stars and a stilted script as well as the F1 drivers

Photo by: Aston Martin/GP Racing

Others strove for glitz, an experiment perhaps best left unrepeated in the virtual world. Alpine’s Glitchy McGlitchface stream was at least functionally useful in terms of access to the senior personnel present; Aston Martin’s effort, heavy on celebs, light on lightness of touch, felt over-scripted and under-rehearsed, to the extent that at certain points host Gemma Arterton seemed to be unwittingly channelling Sam Fox and Mick Fleetwood’s hapless double-act at the 1989 Brit Awards.

Yes, the hour is now long overdue for the teams to do what they do best – go racing…

Red Bull also took old car to disguise its tech during a filming day

Photo by: GP Racing