What changes in the F1 regulations this season?

Changes for 2013

Some key changes in the FIA regulations for the 2013 F1™ season.

Formula 1 is a constantly changing, constantly evolving sport. Things are never idle here. Even when an F1 car is parked, its almost breathing. Development is virtually non-stop all round the year and most of it happens while the action is off air and it seems uneventfully holiday-ish in the world of F1. New parts for F1 cars are almost produced every 7 minutes, 7 days a week, all through the year. To keep pace with the competition, there’s no other way this could be done. Its relentless and that’s one of the biggest challenges of the sport.

With all this development, that comes from a bunch of some the most talented & clever engineers in the world, there has to be someone overlooking and administering the whole exercise. That someone is the FIA. They also lay down the ground rules for the competition and a new set of regulations (the formula) are put forth before the start of every new season.

Recently, the FIA announced some detail changes to the rules for the next two seasons:

• From a technical perspective, the 2013 rule changes address some safety precautions as well as allowing for the extra weight of the new generation of Pirelli tyres. The car’s roll structures must meet new standards and new, more stringent crash tests will also be applied. The minimum weight of the car has increased by 2kg.
  
• To combat the use of aero-elastic components the static load test will now be applied to all of each team’s survival cells, and the front wing test will permit no more than 10mm deflection rather than 20mm.
  
• There has also been a change to the procedure when cars cannot return to the pits under their own power at the end of a track session. The existing rules state that each car must be able to provide a sample of at least one litre of fuel; from now on, if one stops on track, it must provide that quantity plus the amount of fuel that would have been consumed while driving back to the pits.
  
• On the operational front, during practice sessions the Drag Reduction System (DRS) can now only be used in the same areas on track as it would during the race. Working hours have also been tightened up, with the personnel curfew now extending from six to eight hours on Thursday night, and the number of permitted exceptions dropping from four to two for the entire season.