Effectively, the governing body don’t want a repeat of what happened when the engines were last significantly changed in 2014, when the turbo-hybrid era was introduced.

Mercedes entered the turbo-hybrid era with an engine so powerful that they “never” ran it on full power during qualifying, as revealed by Paddy Lowe, who was the side’s technical director at the time.

FIA head of single seaters, Nikolas Tombazis, is very much wanting to avoid a “huge controversy” in 2026 by one manufacturer having a significantly stronger power unit, which is why measures have been put in place to avoid this.

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“We obviously don’t want to start that season with huge controversy,” Tombazis told Autosport. “Last time, we had it pretty good. Since then, we have learned a bit more, and we can make sure we can avoid any kind of controversy.”

It was Mercedes’ superior engine which really kickstarted their dominance, which only concluded in 2022 when Red Bull won the Constructors’ Championship.

The Silver Arrows won the championship every year from 2014 all the way through to 2021, before their dominance ended following the introduction of the current aerodynamic regulations.

Back in 2014, Daniel Ricciardo was the only non-Mercedes driver to win a race, with the Silver Arrows having won the Constructors’ Championship by a healthy 296 points over Red Bull.

It was in qualifying where Mercedes’ power unit in 2014 really stretched its legs and showed its superiority, to the point that team boss Toto Wolff wanted the Germans to turn their engine down.

READ: Max Verstappen worried after Red Bull fails crash test

Lowe revealed that Wolff didn’t want their advantage to be too big over one-lap, with debates having taken place as to what level to put their engine on for Q3.

“The debate would then be how much to turn the engine up for Q3,” Lowe said, as reported by The Express. “I’d be getting it in the ear from Toto: ‘That’s too much, that’s too much’. And I’m thinking, ‘but if we don’t get pole, we’ll look like a right bunch of mugs’.

“So what number to pick that would do the job and knowing you didn’t want to err on the wrong way? So that was a big part of the discussion on Saturday afternoon. Nice chat to have. Actually, that went on for quite a long time. Through most of 2014, that engine was never on full power for qualifying.”

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F1’s return to the Lusail International Circuit was a brutal affair, with the immense heat having had a greater effect due to each set of tyres only being allowed to be used for a certain number of laps.

This was introduced due to an issue discovered by Pirelli, who believed that their rubber had to be changed constantly to remain intact.

It meant the drivers could push harder, given that the tyres weren’t being used for as long as normal, making every lap almost like a quali lap.

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The drivers felt the repercussions of this in the heat, as several encountered physical issues.

Esteban Ocon was sick in his helmet twice, Lance Stroll briefly passed out, Logan Sargeant retired due to feeling ill, Alex Albon was checked for acute heat exposure and multiple other drivers collapsed in the medical centre after the race.

It was an alarming event for the governing body, with the drivers having claimed that the temperature in the cockpit was close to 80 degrees Celsius.

As a result, the FIA stressed that they’d evaluate how drivers can be supported when faced with dangerously hot conditions.

That’s exactly what they’ve done, as a driver cooling scoop is set to be introduced, despite having previously been rejected by teams over fears that some would try to use it for an aerodynamic advantage.

The device will be designed so that it’s effectively a “slot that can fit under the chassis” and feed cool air to the drivers in the cockpit.

FIA F1 director Nikolas Tombazis is aware that the sides have previously been against such a device and had made “paranoid hypotheses”.

“The reason if had been rejected in the past was because people were worried it would be sucking off boundary layer stuff,” Tombazis told The Race.

“And all of this would be used for some sort of indirect aero advantage and people were making up various, slightly paranoid hypotheses about what can be used.

“It’s just really allowing that scoop to exist in a certain area and giving some maximum dimensions for it.”

READ: Lewis Hamilton tipped to not ‘put everything on the line’

Tombazis has stressed that the device will be designed with defined dimensions, which will significantly reduce any team being able to use it as an advantage.

Something clearly needs to be done to protect the drivers in immense heat, with Tombazis noting that the teams have now “learned their lesson”.

“Everyone’s learned their lesson and thinks a bit less selfishly,” said Tombazis.

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Flexi-wings have become a norm this season and have been captured by TV directors during onboard footage, showing which teams have worked their way around the rulebook.

The governing body has had no choice but to intervene and put an end to the exploitation of flexible front and rear wings, something which will impact multiple teams.

Ahead of F1’s trip to the Marina Bay Circuit, the FIA have instructed all teams to show them drawings of their front and rear wings, to judge who has been breaking the rules, according to Motorsport.com.

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Aston Martin are one side who have seemingly had a flexible front wing, with some pondering whether their recent step backwards is due to reverting to a more traditional design which follows the rules.

Ultimately, the FIA decided that the rules were being exploited far too much, with single-seater director Nikolas Tombazis revealing that the governing body had to act.

“In the F1 regulations we have many flexibility criteria: there are loads that we apply and a certain deflection is allowed,” Tombazis told Motorsport.com’s Italian site.

“There are static tests that we do to check, and it is obvious that these tests are never perfect because the direction of the [test] load you apply is always a bit different from the load that is on the track when it experiences genuine aerodynamic force.

“There may be differences and, for this reason, in the regulation there are some general and conceptual specifications that, in essence, prohibit mechanisms.

“For example, one could draw a wing that, when applying the forces of the FIA test, is fixed but when applying any other load, it could be more flexible. For this reason, we have been clarifying for years that mechanisms are not legal and we have written several clarifications on what we consider a mechanism.”

Tombazis went onto reveal that some teams have used a rubber material to get around the rules, with him stating that the FIA “do not consider this acceptable”.

“If under a carbon surface, we have levers that allow a deflection in one direction and not in another, we can consider this a mechanism,” he said.

“Another thing we have said in the past is that it’s not acceptable when a component has relative motion against an adjacent element, sliding in a different direction [from it].

READ: Sebastian Vettel completes Red Bull return

“What happened recently? Some teams have components adjacent to each other that have a fairly high movement but do not slide [in tandem] because these areas are covered with rubber material. We do not consider this acceptable and, for this reason, we have made a clarification.”

The introduction of the TD could potentially impact the pecking order, something which will be discovered across the upcoming double-header in Singapore and Japan.

One team not expected to be impacted are Red Bull, as team boss Christian Horner has insisted that the RB19 is totally legal.

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DRS was introduced to the pinnacle of motorsport in 2011 and makes overtaking easier, due to a car’s top-speed being increased as a result of a slot in the rear wing opening, reducing drag.

The system has become a well-known feature of F1; however, there have been calls from both within and outside the paddock for it to be scrapped.

Whilst the system can only be used when a driver is within a second of the car in-front, it has resulted in some boring races.

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When a series of cars are within a second of each other it forms what is called a ‘DRS train’.

In this instance, the DRS system is effectively cancelled out as the other surrounding cars also have the system in use, meaning a speed advantage isn’t gained.

With the current cars being so big and heavy, the only overtakes which tend to be seen during a Grand Prix are completed using DRS, something which was noted by Sebastian Vettel last year.

The retired four-time World Champion admitted last season that DRS is at times the “only thing” which allows drivers to overtake, resulting in him to question what it’d be like for the system to be scrapped.

“The interesting bit would be to take the DRS off and see how the racing really is, and if you are able to overtake a lot better than, let’s say, in the past,” Vettel said following last year’s Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, as reported by PlanetF1.com.

“I’m only a bit cautious for the DRS, because it was brought in as an assistance to help overtaking, but now it feels a bit like it’s the only thing that allows you to overtake at times.”

READ: Daniel Ricciardo reveals intention to replace Sergio Perez in 2024

According to Tombazis, DRS isn’t going anywhere just yet, with him believing that overtaking will be “very difficult” if the system is removed.

“In an ideal world it is conceivable to remove DRS, but in the short term it will not happen because otherwise overtaking would be very difficult,” Tombazis told Italian outlet Corriere della Sera.

“We are no longer in the ’80s, when simulations were not so advanced and the differences between one car and the next were great. With the current level of technology, of science, removing the DRS would be a risk for the sport.”

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Brundle simply tweeted “wow” after the news broke, with the pressure potentially starting to get to the FIA president, following a turbulent few weeks.

Ben Sulayem is certainly not in the sport’s good books as it stands, with the president having infuriated the owners and the teams with recent comments.

In the last few weeks alone, Ben Sulayem has infuriated the teams by announcing that two new sides could join the grid from 2025, has angered Liberty Media after labelling a $20 billion offer to buy the sport as “inflated”, and recently had sexist comments from over 20 years ago resurface.

READ: ‘They’re close to being stalkers’: Daniel Ricciardo on Japanese fans

As if this wasn’t enough, he also publicly shared his support for Andretti-Cadillac’s entry to join the pinnacle of motorsport.

As a result of everything that’s happened, it’s been reported that Liberty Media have had enough of Ben Sulayem’s tenure, with the American company having identified former Motorsport UK boss David Richards has a potential replacement.

Ben Sulayem has certainly been tested following his comments, with Sky Sports’ Craig Slater having reported that senior figures at the World Motor Sport Council had “offered their advice to Ben Sulayem in the past couple of weeks”.

According to Slater, the senior figures “voiced their concerns” to Ben Sulayem, with his leadership having been questioned.

The “day-to-day” running of Formula 1 will now be done by FIA head of single-seaters, Nikolas Tombazis; however, Ben Sulayem is still expected to attend some races despite having switched his focus to other matters.

READ: Aston Martin boss wants Sebastian Vettel to ‘regret’ his decision

Ben Sulayem relinquishing his position is something that the FIA have previously suggested, with the current president having released a statement confirming the changes.

“We have dedicated a lot of time and effort to making significant, informed changes to our Formula One team to create the right structure with the right people to oversee the future regulation of the sport,” Ben Sulayem said.

“By developing and empowering people within our organisation, as well as bringing in expertise and experience from the outside, I am confident that we are in the best position possible to move forward together with our partners at FOM and the Formula One teams.”

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While some teams such as Red Bull and Ferrari quickly got to grips with F1’s new era, other struggled and encountered unexpected problems with their designs.

Mercedes were one of the teams to struggle with porpoising, a violent bouncing cause by the aerodynamic design of the new era of Formula 1 cars, which was causing drivers a lot of pain when driving the car.

The height at which teams decided to run their car from the ground had a major impact on the porpoising, as the lower the car, the worse the bouncing, but also the more aerodynamic the car.

READ: ‘Bloated’ FIA blasted by driver for ‘meddlesome’ involvement

Eventually the FIA stepped in to tighten the rules surround the underfloors of the cars, limiting the flexibility of the floors and eliminating loopholes that could have been exploited by teams to gain performance.

The FIA’s technical director of single-seaters Nikolas Tomazis has spoken about the FIA’s underfloor intervention, claiming that they did not believe that any teams were cheating, but admitting that there were exploitable loopholes in the original rules.

“Teams clearly always tend to work on the edge of the regulations, and we didn’t think anybody was cheating back then,” he explained.

“But the way the regulations were written permitted a bit of trickery, let’s say, that was unintended. That’s why we clarified the regulations by a technical directive and put some changes in the regulations.

“There’s two areas of the regulations where we can act unilaterally without F1 commission approval. The one is to do with stiffness, Article 3.15, and the other one is to do with safety. That gave us the necessary ability to act on that front.”

READ: Max Verstappen makes blunt comment about Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas

Mercedes have admitted that they chose the wrong development path in the 2022 pre-season, claiming that the porpoising problem was a result of the team incorrectly understanding the new regulations.

With the rules clarified ahead of the 2023 season, and Mercedes having learnt from their 2022 shortcomings, the Silver Arrows will be confident of producing a more competitive car than the W13 for next season.

Ahead of the team’s winter shutdown, Mercedes have fired up the engine of the W14 for the very first time, showing that they are fully focused on developing their 2023 challenger.

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The cost cap was introduced in 2021 to limit teams to spending a maximum of $145m over the course of a season, while the 2022 season saw the introduction of a lot of major regulation changes that were brought in to increase the competitiveness and entertainment value of the sport.

In the season just gone however, it was the same three teams who pulled away from the rest, with Red Bull and Ferrari being head and shoulders above the competition, with Mercedes not too far behind them.

F1 veterans Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel have recently voiced their disappointment over the new regulations, claiming that they have not seen the effects that they were hoping to see following the introduction of these changes.

READ: Lando Norris explains why McLaren are ‘fired up to make better car’ in 2023

Technical director of single seaters at the FIA Nikolas Tombazis has now asked for drivers and fans to keep their faith in the FIA’s changes, suggesting that it may take more than one season for the full effects to be seen.

“The effect of the cost cap, it will take some years for it to sink in because there’s still an initial advantage for some people,” he explained.

“I think initially it was bound to still be the better-off or well-off teams that adapted better to the rules.

“But I do think now people have seen what the solutions are and are likely to be adapting for next year. I think it was the outcome of it being the first year of the regulations.

READ: Ferrari fired stark warning about Mattia Binotto

“I think if it was the fifth year like that, it would be a bit more worrying, but it was the first.”

Tombazis’ claims that the cost cap could take more than one season to prove its worth may have been proven by Haas team principal Guenther Steiner’s recent comments about his team’s ambitions for 2023.

The Italian claimed that Haas were unable to compete with the top teams last season because they did not have the financial muscle to even reach the cost cap, but expects that every team on the grid will reach the cap next year, making it a much more even playing field in 2023.

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For a sport deemed to be the pinnacle of motorsport, the championship has looked embarrassing in recent years when met with a wet race.

At the Japanese Grand Prix towards the end of the most recent season, a lengthy red flag interval was required whilst heavy rain pounded the Suzuka International Circuit.

The Monaco Grand Prix was also red flagged for a considerable amount of time, again as a result of rain.

READ: Red Bull open to selling Formula 1 team

Thankfully, neither were as bad as the embarrassing 2021 Belgian Grand Prix, which was stopped for virtually two hours.

On that day, the only racing that took place was two laps behind the Safety Car, before it was stopped.

The sport was left with “scars” on that day, with methods being discussed to ensure that racing can take place in difficult conditions.

With that in mind, the FIA are looking into introducing wheel arches, potentially as soon as the second half of 2023, with Tombazis keen to “avoid” a repeat of Spa.

“Spa in 2021 still left scars on the sport because it was very unfortunate circumstance,” Tombazis acknowledged.

“It would have been ten times worse, I think, if we’d gone all the way to Japan and had to pack up and come back.

“We really need to avoid that. We have so many people watching, spectators paying tickets, teams travelling all over the world – that to then suddenly say we can’t race is not very responsible of us.”

The main issue with the wet weather over the last few seasons hasn’t actually been the rain itself, with the spray flicked up in the drivers faces being the biggest issue.

Wheel arches will catch the majority of the spray and simply dispense it back onto the circuit; however, they won’t be used at every moment when rain begins to fall.

“We only think it’s going to be something that gets used on a couple of occasions a year,” explained Tombazis.

“Maybe three, that sort of thing.

“I think it will bring the raceable conditions from what is maybe currently intermediate tyres, as you almost never race with the wet tyres.

“I think it’ll bring it well into the wet tyre territory. We don’t want it to be that every time there’s a drop of rain, then suddenly you have to fit these things.

“Also, we would not be asking for them to be fitted or removed in a rush. Their fitting or removal would either be before a race or during a red flag. If a race starts very wet and gets dry, they would stay on.

“I’m expecting that it’s going to be a maybe 50 per cent improvement kind of thing,” he said.

The work in regard to the wheel arches has so far been completely computer-based, with future real-life tests likely to be needed to ensure the feature works.

Part of the computerised simulations being done is to see how the spray is affected by the wheel arches, something that is difficult to “determine”, according to Tombazis.

“We have done a lot of CFD [computer fluid dynamics] simulations, because we want to make sure the effect of these devices is relatively small on the overall aerodynamics,” Tombazis said.

READ: ‘Really terrible’: Ex-Mercedes engineer unhappy with news getting ‘buried’

“There still is an effect, but not a massive one. Also, we are simulating the droplets of the rain and so on, and seeing how it affects spray.

“What is a bit of a challenge in the simulations is to determine the relative proportion of what comes from the diffuser to what comes from the tyres.

“Once we have a solution, we’ll get to do some prototypes and run them on some cars to try and evaluate that properly.”

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Throughout the 2022 season, drivers were being shown the ‘meatball flag’ as soon as an endplate became wobbly, with the governing body having become relentlessly strict in regard to vehicle and driver safety.

The FIA’s strictness was as a result of them allowing Yuki Tsunoda to continue racing in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix with a taped-up rear wing, something that was truly remarkable to see.

Tombazis believes this situation prompted an “over-reaction” from the FIA for the remainder of the season, with Kevin Magnussen having been awarded three black-and-orange flags in 2022 despite the structural integrity of his VF-22 being safe.

READ: Fernando Alonso reveals why he’s disappointed with Formula 1

“[We] had a situation in Baku where a car was let to run on with damage that really the car should not have been running with,” he explained.

“One of the AlphaTauris with rear wing damage taped up – that was a big risk. There we got it wrong,” he continued.

“Then I think that created a bit of an over-reaction where we started deeming cars unsafe even when they were on the limit, let’s say. So we went in the wrong direction, and took some corrective action after the US.”

Speaking more on the matter, Tombazis did admit that “it’s difficult” to judge when a car is truly damaged, but that in 2023 the flag will only be shown for “serious structural damage”.

“It’s difficult,” he asserted.

“We would still black-and-orange flag a car with serious structural damage, like Hamilton in Singapore for example when his wing was scraping the floor.

“But in 99 per cent of the cases the teams bring the cars in anyway themselves, so it removes the need for intervention.

“The teams are by and large quite responsible.”

Haas will be delighted that a driver will no longer be shown the flag for a “wobbly” endplate, something Magnussen was three times as mentioned.

READ: Williams make Alex Albon demand

The FIA admits that upon evaluation of their handling of the 2022 season, they “overreacted” when it came to using the black-and-orange flag.

“We wouldn’t show one for a wobbly front wing endplate,” he revealed.

“We analysed it, and overreacted a bit.”

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DRS allows the rear wing of the F1 cars to open at certain parts of circuits, when within a second of the car ahead, decreasing drag and therefore allowing the attacking car to gain a temporary pace advantage.

The innovation has been a roaring success since its introduction just over a decade ago, playing a major part in some of the most entertaining races in F1 history, however it has recently been suggested that the system could do with a revamp.

Sky Sports pundit and former F1 driver Martin Brundle has argued that DRS has become too powerful in recent seasons and has suggested that the length of DRS zones around circuits should be reduced.

READ: Toto Wolff compares Lewis Hamilton to Tom Brady

“You have to say the DRS by and large has been too strong this year hasn’t it,” said Brundle.

“Passes are made down the straight and they need to be made under braking.

“They need to put you in play to make the overtake not to actually just plain overtake. They need to shorten the distances, delay the activation.”

Brundle may get his wish as early as next season, as the FIA’s head of single-seat racing, Nikolas Tombazis, has hinted that these changes might be made to the DRS system to weaken its power.

“In some races, we may well need to actually reduce the DRS zones,” suggested Tombazis.

“We don’t want overtaking to be, as we say, inevitable or actually easy. It still has to be a fight.

“If it happens too quickly, if you see a car approaching and then going by and disappearing, it’s actually worse than being at the back and fighting.

“It needs the right balance to be found there.”

READ: This is why Adrian Newey is concerned about 2023 for Red Bull and Max Verstappen

The new regulations that came into effect at the start of 2023 enabled cars to be able to follow each other closer than before, with the effects of dirty air being less significant with the new cars.

This however means that by the time cars enter DRS zones, they are now usually close behind the car in front and make the overtake much easier than they should be able to.

It is yet to be announced whether the FIA will make any changes to DRS in time for next season, or whether this will become something that is implemented in the long term, as the FIA continue to increase the competitiveness and entertainment value of F1.

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