There’s a major overhaul coming to the F1 rules and regulations, involving both car design and power.
Part of this plan was to bring back ground effects, a term used to describe certain aerodynamic techniques in shaping the underbelly of the car so that it ‘sticks’ to the track better. Ground effects have come and gone in F1, be used to massive success with Lotus during the 1979 season with the addition of an inverted aerofoil. Aerofoils usually are the things responsible for keeping aircraft aloft, so to have one upside down on a car would have an incredible effect at keeping it glued down. The theory behind bringing the ground effects back was to enable the cars to race closer to each other, this has since been scrapped. Meeting’s over the Turkish Grand Prix weekend involving the Technical Regulations Working Group (TRWG) came to the agreement that there should be no ground effects. I can’t see this as a loss of something exciting and fresh to look forward too, it’s been so long since those techniques were employed in Formula 1 we wouldn’t have seen a great use from them for maybe the whole season. It’s a tricky area to get right and with such limited testing it may have had poor results.