The FIA is a fickle beast. One moment they're letting Ferrari off with a slap on the wrist for a totally illegal engine. The next they're giving Vettel a 5 place grid drop for yellow flags he couldn't see (as quoted by the report). The regulating body of F1 has constantly clashed with both fans and teams. One issue they've never quite shaken off though, is how to make the sport competitive. The 2022 rule change is a shining example of a drastic change to restore competitive parity. It very may well work. However, F1's instrument of choice to avoid one-team dominance hasn't been nearly as refined. Typically, Formula 1's governing body chooses a part of the car to 'nerf'. This leads to focusing on innovations by a single team, and eliminating them as they come forward. Think back to last year's DAS. It was a totally legal system at the time. Instead of encouraging development from the other teams, the FIA set forth to outlaw aa previously legal part. Make no mistake, if that improvement were on the Williams, it would have been seen as a competitively equitable.
This year, the FIA has been back to its old tricks. Though none of us could really predict it, F1's newest floor changes have wreaked havoc on the grid's low-rake race cars. Which cars are low rake? Mercedes, Aston Martin, Alpine, and Haas (not that it matters). You need only look at the first name on this list to know why F1's governing body made this change. Mercedes dominance is well known, but did the FIA take it too far this time?
Noticeably, Mercedes' main rivals -- namely Red Bull and McLaren, are not on this list. This change means many more developmental headaches for teams that have pursued a low-rake design for the past 7 years. Because of the token system, changes to the car are sparsely distributed. Teams can only make two major design changes for this year from last. So teams with the current low-rake design were caught between a rock and a hard place. If they develop the car as normal, they lose out on crucial pace upgrades for 2021. But if they change their entire rake design, they don't really have enough tokens to make an entirely new car design. As such, we see teams with this low rake design have plummeted down the field. Alpine and Aston Matin especially. So the question is, is this fair?
Firstly, let's dispel the notion that the FIA were not aware of the effect this would have. FIA's governing body has the unilateral right to ask for data from its teams. If they didn't ask, that would be incompetency. But that approach is wholly unlikely. It's more likely that the FIA was aware what the impact of this change would be. Instead of requiring changes to the diffuser, or other areas of the car that make it so quick, they changed an area of the car more essential to some teams than others. If they made a mistake? Fine, but they should be scrutinized for not doing their research. If they did it on purpose? Then no, it wouldn't be fair.
There's this unwritten agreement between fans and the FIA, which is that they have the mandate to actively target the success of dominant cars. Think about weird it would be if the FIA came out and banned one of Alfa Romeo's rule-abiding parts last year. Fans would be in an uproar. But ultimately, we care about entertainment more than we do about fairness. The issue for the FIA is, how do you nerf one team without entirely destroying another. This time, they've got it wrong.
Imagine being an engineer at Aston Martin or Alpine. You've constantly strived to bring your team forward. All that hard work gets dashed when one of your parts are targeted. Just because it hurts Mercedes doesn't mean it doesn't hurt other teams. The FIA should not be in the business of 'scorched Earth' changes. We should not accept a regulation style that hurts other teams at the bonus of slightly hindering the Mercedes.
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