Formula 1 Regulatory improvement: Formula Limitless

[Quazar139]

Recently I've been really dissatisfied with the F1 regulations in general. It's meant to be the pinnacle of not only racing but automotive innovation, and to achieve this teams are working round extremely tight rules. However the reasons for these tight rules are very reasonable: for safety. Now the 2026 regulations are a good step forward and all, but safety is really the limiting factor. I am looking to address one of these factors: innovation.

I propose, and somewhat seriously/ somewhat as a thought provocation thing, a Formula with pretty much no rules.

Now this would work something like this:

Drivers wouldn't be in the cars but in crazy low latency sim rigs.
There wouldn't be any rules par this: Car must fit in box X width Y Length Z Height (Probably something like 1990's, 2000's size)

Just imagine all the crazy technologies that would crop up. Like V12's against hydrogen electric cars, with full active suspension, ridiculous active aerodynamics, stupid top speeds and g-forces far beyond human capability.

And with that I leave you to wonder. I hope this is in the right forum section. I'm new here...

[hollus]

Welcome to the forum. I’ve moved this thread to a less F1-centric subforum.

[Greg Locock]

The cars would be boxes, X by Y, with enormous extraction rotors on top, and sliding skirts of some form. It will be a tire war.

So it'll be like watching shoeboxes running round the circuit and they'll sound like vacuum cleaners or helicopters.

[Stu]

[Hoffman900]

A lot of the tight rules are not for safety though. The open wheel concept is the first thing you’d change if you wanted to make it safer. The entire aero concept is around stylization and the “show” with some vague performance metrics for how fast a F1 car should be. The PU rules are designed around corporate wishes.

To start, if you wanted maximim performance from a rule set, you immediatey throw out the open wheel concept. It only sticks around as tradition. Once you can enclose the wheels, the entire aero concept of a F1 car changes as you no longer have to manage these draggy things on each corner.

As for PU’s, V12s are never coming back in an open rule set. Down sized, incredibly high boostx hybrid power trains are here to stay… the only thing that would change would likely be the fuel limit (and allowing re fueling pit stops).