With Formula 1 becoming less and less competitive as the years went on, with the likes of Mercedes and Red Bull using their financial muscle to pull away from the rest of the grid, the FIA intervened with a number of changes to bring the field closer together.
A cost cap was introduced to ensure that all teams could spend a maximum of $145m, preventing the wealthy teams from simply buying the title away from the smaller teams.
Major regulation changes were introduced at the start of last year, forcing teams to redesign their cars to suit the new rules and enter a new era of Formula 1.
The new design of cars was aimed to increase the quality of racing as the airflow allowed drivers to follow other cars much closer without seeing the negative effects of driving in dirty air.
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While Red Bull comfortably ran away with both championships with their rivals struggled to adapt to the new regulations, team principal Christian Horner has praised the changes for doing what they promised to do.
“From a personal point of view, it’s been an amazing season for our team. And I think for Formula 1, I think the racing has been better,” claimed Horner.
“I think that there’s been 25 percent more passes this year than previous years, I think the regulations are delivering in enabling the drivers to follow more closely.”
One issue that came with the new regulations was porpoising, as the aerodynamics of the new designs caused a violent bouncing that perplexed engineers up and down the paddock and caused drivers a lot of pain.
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The Red Bull boss has now fired a sly dig at Mercedes, who spent half of the season trying to stop this bouncing, claiming that they were not the only team that had to counter these issues and regulation changes but simply did it better than their rivals.
“I think that as a team we got these regulations right, which considering we were the last team to transition onto them, after you know what happened last year [2021], I think our team has done an amazing job in coming out with such a competitive car and bouncing back after a double DNF in Bahrain. We never lost sight of what our target was,” explained Horner.
Red Bull will be hindered by their penalty for breaching the 2021 cost cap this year, leaving the door wide open for Mercedes and Ferrari to return to winning ways, after initially struggling to get to grips with the new era of F1.