2021 F1 car changes bigger than many expect, says Fry

Renault technical senior Pat Fry says Formula 1 teams will not hold when in making as big a transpiration as possible to the 2021 cars despite the chassis freeze restrictions.

In response to the financial implications of the coronavirus pandemic, F1 and the FIA well-set to an constructive carryover of cars from 2020.

It ways the major components of each team’s challenger from last year must be frozen, with 2021 changes limited to aero parts and areas covered by a token system.

PLUS: What the first squint at 2021’s F1 aero rules tells us

While that appears to limit the telescopic for modifications, Fry is well-spoken that there remains a lot of areas that can be venal which his team will squint at improving.

“Although various chunks of the car are homologated, so you can’t transpiration them, there’s still quite a lot that’s unshut and up for grabs,” said Fry, Renault’s chassis technical director.

“You can’t do a whole new car, but you can definitely do half a one. We’re working our way through what we think is sensible there and trying to do as much as we can.”

Fry said that with Renault having made good aero gains this year, it was important the team built on that throughout 2021.

Asked where the focus for the team’s new challenger would be, he said: “Other than nose, chassis, engine and gearbox, we’re looking at reviewing most of it. I think it’ll be the same for everyone.

“I think the aero minutiae direction we’ve been having, in terms of the philosophy of what we want from it, it has been sound and we need to protract lanugo that route. The floor changes, it changes the spritz structures fairly dramatically, but then it’s the same for everyone.

“We just need to do the weightier we can, dealing with it. But fundamentally, we’re still just trying to build on the philosophy that we’ve had. There’s still quite a lot of telescopic for what you can do within the rules.”

Fry believes that teams will have their work cut out getting on top of the 2021 regulation changes that have been introduced to try to cut downforce.

The biggest of these changes is new floor dimensions, with a key zone superiority of the rear tyre having been cut yonder completely.

The new rules are aimed at wearing downforce by virtually 10%, and early tests of the new floor diamond have shown the tweaks have a big influence.

“The floor change, although it looks quite a small and insignificant change, how it unquestionably changes the piloting at the when of the car is quite dramatic really,” said Fry.

“It will be lanugo to who unquestionably manages to cope with that the best, to see how it unquestionably upsets the order.

“I guess McLaren can transpiration increasingly than most because, obviously with a power unit change, that allows you to transpiration a load of other shit of the car outside of the normal homologation side of things.”