Guenther Steiner: 2021 regulations have “still enough freedom” for car designs

Haas F1 team principal Guenther Steiner says that the 2021 change of rules and regulations allow “still enough freedom” for teams to create different looking cars to each other.

With the official announcement of the technical regulations for 2021 being confirmed it now gives teams across the grid the opportunity to start preparing and designing their cars.
 
The regulations have gone under a big overhaul with changes coming to how the cars look, the aerodynamics to reduce the dirty air behind and the introduction of a $175m budget cap for teams to stick to when designing their car.
 
But Steiner feels the new regulations still give teams the opportunity to differ theirs from one another.
 
“The car – it’s a little bit different, and it is a change,” he said.
 
“These are the regulations. We live with them and try to get the best out of it.
 
“We’ll try to achieve what the new regulations want to achieve, with more overtaking and a closing of the field.
 
“The development, whatever the regulations, is always in aerodynamics. That’s the main thing to develop.
 
“There is still enough freedom where we can develop areas of the car to make them different from each other.
 
“We’ll try to get a little bit more performance out than our competitors.”
 
It was thanks to Haas and other team inputs that the regulations were altered to allow more creativity rather than every F1 car being near the same.
 
“It was the biggest argument between FIA, FOM (Formula One Management) and the teams,” Steiner added.
 
“The teams didn’t want to have a single-make car or be boxed in too much. We didn’t want to end up with a GP1 series.
 
“In the end, FOM opened up the creativity by opening up the regulations. So, hopefully, we can achieve it.”