MPH: Imagining an alternate F1 universe where Covid never happened
F1
Covid forced F1 to delay its new regulations — giving us the thrilling 2021 season as a result. But what would have happened without the pandemic? asks Mark Hughes. And what would this year look like?
Would the title battle be closer this year if Covid hadn't happened?
Imagine there had been no Covid pandemic in 2020, that the virus hadn’t escaped the Wuhan laboratory (no I don’t for one moment buy the official bat theory, given that the virus broke cover in the very city doing the only active research on it in the world). Obviously the most important statistic is that probably most of the 6.9 million people to date who have died from the virus would still be alive. But in a more esoteric F1-related sense, imagine how recent history may have looked.
You will recall that the planned all-new ground effect regulations, set for 2021, were postponed for a year for reasons of cost as F1 was facing a terrifying loss of income. Instead, for ’21 we got a trimmed rear floor version of the then-existing regulations. That floor trimming cost the low-rake cars (Mercedes) a lot of performance and played a very significant part in bringing about the end of Mercedes domination. Together with Red Bull’s progress, it made the ’21 season a fantastically closely-matched contest between those two teams which, magically, had as their respective lead drivers the perceived king and the obvious pretender to that title.
Schumacher vs Häkkinen rivalry entertained for several seasons
Michael Cooper /Allsport via Getty Images
Such happy confluences of circumstances in this machinery-dependent sport rarely ever happen. Häkkinen–McLaren vs Schumacher–Ferrari was the last time the obvious top two drivers in the world got to go at it hammer and tong in two evenly-matched cars from opposing teams for more than a single season. We had it in ’06 with Alonso–Renault vs Schumacher-Ferrari. But it’s a rarity – and we got it in ’21 and it was fabulous. At least until the hare-brained pressure call at the Abu Dhabi finale completely invalidated the whole magnificent season.
But before getting waylaid by that, imagine how that ’21 season would have looked without the pandemic. It would likely have looked much like 2022, the actual first season of the ground effect regs. If the floor-trimmed version of the previous regulations had reduced Mercedes from dominance to mere competitiveness, the ground effect regs completely decimated it – and likely would have done one year earlier if not for the pandemic. Only Red Bull got a proper hold of the full implications of these regulations, something which Mercedes to this day has still not done.
So there would have been no argument about how the ’21 title was decided – because it would almost certainly have been dominated by Max Verstappen’s Red Bull and all done and dusted well before Abu Dhabi. Last year would likely have looked much like this season looks now, with the others fielding cars conceived without having grasped the Red Bull’s secret and Red Bull developing its basic platform even further to extend its advantage.
So without Covid what would we be seeing this season? Because that’s probably what we’ll actually be seeing next season. Have the others fully understood the implications of Red Bull’s approach to the ground effect regulations? The combination of underfloor design and suspension which allows the downforce to be delivered at low ride heights and high, always there, needing less wing than the others, stalling the whole underbody when DRS is deployed, more compliant suspension allowing them to use parts of the track out of bounds to the stiff-suspended competition. Flying down the straights, flying through the turns – and driven by Verstappen. How is that combination going to be matched? Not through finessing existing concepts.
