Esteban Ocon of Alpine thought the new cars had improved the racing.
“There were a lot of races that were mega with close fights,” he said, picking Saudi Arabia and Brazil as two of the most exciting. He said the back-and-forth overtaking reminded him of go-kart racing.
Formula 1: On and Off the Track
It used to be that when drivers found the opportunity to overtake, “you had to go for it, that was it,” Ocon said. “Now, it’s very different. It’s definitely gone in the right direction.”
According to Pirelli, Formula 1’s tire supplier, there was a 30 percent increase in overtaking from 2021 to 2022. In 2021, the company recorded that overtaking took place 599 times compared with 785 this year.
Mario Isola, Pirelli’s head of Formula 1 and car racing, said it showed the “package was working well” with the new rules. Updated tires were also introduced for 2022 that were designed to let drivers attack more without overheating their rubber, something that could cause them to lose performance.
This year, Isola said, “drivers were fighting, two or three cars together, overtaking each other, trying to use any possibility or any mistake from the competitor to overtake and pushing for not just one corner, but three, four, five laps.”
But not every driver was convinced the new rules had been a total success. Sebastian Vettel, who retired from Formula 1 at the end of the season, felt there was not a big difference because there was a reduced slipstream effect, which is when a driver is directly behind another car and gains along a straight to set up the ability to overtake.
“I don’t want to say it has failed,” he said. “But certainly, a lot of effort had gone in and not all the effort came out.”