(Motorsport) The upcoming 2022 Formula 1 season is arguably the most exciting one in years with revamped technical regulations, the biggest change in Formula 1 for 40 years. The regulations are aimed to promote wheel-to-wheel racing with bigger teams having fewer advantages throughout the grid. In an interview, Ross Brawn, Managing Director of Formula 1 said “It'll take a little while but I think we're going to be in a far better place going forward with the type of car that we have. Lots of optimism for the season and I think we'll see some interesting results."

With the number of changes for the upcoming season, Ross Brawn was joined by FIA chiefs Nikolas Tombazis and Jason Sommervile to explain everything that can be expected. "Every decision has been made to not dumb down the sport, but to make it more achievable for more of the teams and to get a closer competition going on, while still leaving meritocracies so the best teams still win," stated Brawn. "I think there will be a bit of disparity at the beginning, but we're not expecting a huge disparity. I'm confident that these rules will lead to much better racing, and we're not stopping here. As soon as the cars start to appear, we can analyse how they achieve their performance, we can evolve it, we can tune the regulations to keep it going in the right direction."

In the last few years, Formula 1 cars have lost around half of their downforce while following another car closely which made overtaking difficult but the 2022 cars are expected to circumnavigate the issue due to a carefully thought out design. "We're so massively ahead of where we were because the [previous] cars were dreadful," said Brawn. "So even if we're five per cent worse [than we hoped], we'll still be a long way ahead of what the old cars are. I don't think we ever made a performance prediction," he claimed. "We said let's target a couple of seconds less than where we are now because that's what the teams will make up when they get hold of them. But it was really as simple as that. Knowing the progress teams make, I'm not surprised by what's happened and personally I'm not concerned."

The 2022 cars will provide a fresh slate to every manufacturer, which means that it’s quite possible that more teams and drivers can fight for wins on race weekends. It’s evident that some manufacturers will get it right and others won’t, which means there could be some surprise podium finishes in the upcoming season. "We only really had two drivers in the world championship and two teams in the world championship," Brawn said. "It was a great season from the point of view of entertainment and battles, but we really would like to see more teams in that battle."

All said and done, it’s unlikely that things will change too dramatically in the overall pecking order and the top teams are still expected to dominate over the course of the season. Brawn said “I don't think the regulations will change the regular order of things dramatically. I don't think we're going to see Mick Schumacher dominate this year. I think we'll see some of the midfield teams challenging so I think we'll have a bigger group of competitive teams. Last year, we either expected a Mercedes or a Red Bull to win unless something different happened.

"We're blessed with a number of great drivers in Formula 1 today. Lando Norris, the Ferrari drivers [Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz], we've got George Russell in the Mercedes. I think there's any number of combinations of drivers that give us a fantastic season and if there's three or four of them mixing it up, that's even better. I'm optimistic about the coming season. I think the good teams will do a good job, they've got the equities and the experience."

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