LONDON: Red Bull’s Max Verstappen says the changes to Formula 1’s rules amount to “a tickle” in terms of addressing his and other drivers’ concerns about the new style of racing.
However, championship contender George Russell described the changes as “good” and world champion Lando Norris said the drivers “have to be happy” with what had been done.A series of complex technical tweaks have been made with two main aims - to return qualifying to a more flat-out challenge for the drivers, and to reduce closing speeds during racing.
Verstappen, who has said the new cars have made him question his future in the sport, said: “It’s a tickle. It’s not what we need yet to really make it flat out. Like I said, it’s complicated to get everything to agree. I just hope that next year we can make really big, big changes.”
McLaren’s Norris added: “It’s tough to go that much further. There’s only so much you can do with the rules that you have to keep things within. We would all have liked more in the direction that they’ve gone.
“The race really isn’t going to be that different. So some things are not going to change that much, and the qualifying should be a bit more flat-out qualifying-style laps, which is a nice thing. It’s what we want [as] the drivers, so I think we have to be happy with the amount of changes that they’ve done.”
The new engines have a near 50-50 split between internal combustion and electrical power, and require significant energy management.The changes have been targeted at reducing what have been described as “counter-intuitive” driving techniques, such as lifting off and coasting before corners in qualifying to charge the battery.
The other key focus was reducing the likelihood of speed differentials caused when one car is deploying all its 350kW (470bhp) of electrical power and another is deploying none because it is charging its battery.
Norris said: “We’ve done a good job in trying to improve things. The bigger things and the things we want more in the future are going to take more time.”Norris was referring to the belief expressed by both his team principal Andrea Stella and Red Bull counterpart Laurent Mekies that hardware changes to the engine are needed to reduce the need for energy management further.
