Pat Symonds concedes F1 2019 aero changes fell short of target

Formula 1 chief technical officer Pat Symonds has conceded the aerodynamic rule changes for the 2019 season failed to have meaningful change, adding that with hindsight he “wouldn’t have done them”.

F1 tweaked its aerodynamic rules for the 2019 season in a bid to help cars follow each other more closely, only for the drivers to report little if any change once they hit the track.

Speaking at Autosport International on Thursday, Symonds admitted the level of change brought about by the tweaks was “not as much as I would have hoped for”, but said they were still useful ahead of the more widespread changes for 2021.

“They were done in a bit of a hurry, and with the benefit of hindsight, I wouldn’t have done them, but that’s with the benefit of hindsight,” Symonds said.

“In terms of what they did to the wake of the car, relative to what we’ve done in 2021, it’s been useful. And in fact, we have never run the exact configuration that the rules came up with.

“What we’d done is a lot of research by that time. We’re now talking late ’18, mid ’18. We’d done a fair bit of work, and we were starting to understand the critical areas, but we hadn’t run the configuration that we actually had to get some rules out for.

“So I think we could have done that whole exercise a little bit better, and I don’t regard that in any way to be a precedent for what we’ve done in 2021.”

F1 has taken a more root-and-branch approach to its change of the technical regulations for the 2021 season, with the final set of rules being published at the end of October.