It just sounded different. There was a fizzing that had not been there when the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix concluded the 2021 Formula One season three months earlier.

As Max Verstappen’s RB18 barreled and growled downhill to the Circuit de Catalunya-Barcelona’s Turn 1 on February 23, 2022 — the first day of F1 preseason testing before the new campaign — it was clearly heard trackside.

Designed to a set of aerodynamic regulations intended to promote overtaking, the air striking the new, larger bodywork surfaces of the cars was more audible.

With F1 now saying farewell to the 2022 generation of ground-effect cars, that memory sums up the problems of those designs and sets out what F1 is hoping to achieve in 2026 and beyond.

When the intention behind the 2022 rules was set out, FIA single-seater chief Nikolas Tombazis said “raceability (sic) is the main target”.

The central idea was to reduce the dirty-air problem F1 had long struggled with to generate more overtaking and exciting racing. Turbulent or “dirty air” makes overtaking harder, as a driver following another car suddenly finds that theirs becomes unstable in the other’s invisible wake.

But this attempt to do so brought about other problems over the past three years.

In wet conditions, the larger aero parts on the cars’ wings, noses and sidepods sending dirty air higher and wider did the same thing to water. F1’s spray visibility problems got worse.

And then there was how the return to ground-effect caused porpoising. This bouncing motion occurs when aerodynamic pressure rapidly detaches and reattaches when cars run low to the ground, which is uncomfortable for drivers and reduces downforce, making the cars slower.

The dirty-air issue did initially improve. Data recently released by motorsport’s governing body, the FIA, states that in 2021, a following car had 67 per cent of the downforce of one ahead of it at 20m behind, then 55 per cent at a distance of 10m. In 2022, this became 95 per cent at 20m and 85 per cent at 10m.

But over the 2023-25 period, the same data (gathered by the FIA, Formula One Management (FOM) and the teams) showed that downforce for the following car had been reduced back to 80 per cent at 20m and 65 per cent at 10m.

The essence of F1 explains what happened: the teams upgrade their cars to generate extra downforce, with the additional aero development increasing dirty air.

The 2022-25 rules writers — composed of in-house engineers working for the FIA and FOM — had set out to move away from cars that were “very quick … but not raceable,” said former F1 sporting chief and famed Ferrari technical director Ross Brawn, at the 2019 United States GP, when the regulations in question were announced as finalized.

But while the FIA’s data shows that was achieved, and there was great racing between Verstappen and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc to kick off the new era, that subsequent aero development made dirty air an increased factor yet again.

Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc go side by side in Bahrain in 2022 (Mark Thompson/Getty Images)

On the second key aim of this ruleset — closer competition — the FIA’s data release is instructive.

It states that in 2021, a typical dry qualifying session would have a 2.5 per cent difference covering the fastest and slowest times of all 20 cars in Q1. In 2022, around the new rules, this was reduced to 1.6 per cent, then went down again to 1.2 per cent in 2023, up to 1.4 per cent in 2024 and down to 1.1 per cent in 2025. The performance gap between the teams was noticeably smaller.

It was this small margin that meant teams even in the upper part of the F1 midfield could record bad results if their drivers could not get the most from the car. For instance, Lewis Hamilton ended the 2025 season with three consecutive Q1 knockouts, despite usually only being slightly slower than teammate Leclerc in the other Ferrari.

When the field is so evenly matched, it takes the best operating teams to break free and record the best results consistently.

Red Bull won 54 of the 92 races that took place from  2022 to 2025, with McLaren next best on 19 victories. And it means Ferrari, Mercedes and the rest of the grid must share the blame for the spread not being better. But that does feed F1’s meritocratic aims and establishes the narratives fans and followers crave — from Verstappen’s might being established these past few years, to Red Bull’s implosion and McLaren’s rise from the midfield.

Here, the 2022 rules should be viewed as successful, as the stories changed and the title successes were shared, unlike in prior F1 eras, such as when Mercedes kept a stranglehold on the top positions in the previous decades.

But one familiar story from across this era was how the drivers detested the ground-effect cars.

At the 2025 Las Vegas GP, when The Athletic asked Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso for his view, the Spaniard was unequivocal.

“I will not miss this generation of cars,” he said.

Fernando Alonso at the 2025 Las Vegas GP. (Stefano Facchin / Alessio Morgese / NurPhoto / Getty Images)

“But next year, probably, we will go slower, and we will miss them when we drive the next cars because we always want to be as fast as possible. But these cars are definitely too heavy. They are too big. And the ground-effect and the ride heights — we are racing in a way that is not really fun to drive and probably not even (enough) to follow cars.

“The expectations of this regulation, that it was to follow closely and to have better action on track, was not really a success.”

This again took The Athletic back to that Barcelona test in early 2022.

At Turn 9 — a rapid, uphill, short right-hander — the new cars were impressively fast because such a high-speed corner is where the ground-effect design works best. But at Turn 4 — a slow, cumbersome, long right-hander — they were akin to oil tankers changing direction. The front ends of the cars just did not respond with any agility, which they had done under the previous rules.

When these cars could be fearsomely fast, they were edgy on rear-end turn-in. And this meant only the best drivers could stay confident they would not suddenly spear off-track. Nevertheless, four-time world champion Verstappen said at that same race in Vegas that “it hasn’t been comfortable at all, all these years”, driving the ground-effect cars. “My whole back is falling apart, and my feet always hurt.”

Alongside the 2022 aero changes, F1 finally morphed into a sport that sought to address team spending.

This had left all but a handful limping on before the cost cap was introduced in 2021. The year before, the Williams family finally had to sell its eponymous operation as the financial pressures of operating as a midfield then back-of-the-grid team bit hard during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The 2021 season was supposed to be when the ground-effect designs first appeared, but the pandemic forced a one-year delay. The financial rule changes weren’t held up, and now F1 teams are worth billions.

F1 brought in a modest form of performance balancing with Aerodynamic Testing Restrictions (ATR), which allow the slowest teams more time to use their design tools to improve their cars and build new ones than the fastest ones get. This alters every six months, depending on where a team is in the constructors’ standings at the end of June and December.

Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur suggested at the Abu Dhabi race three weeks ago that teams rooted to the back are now “doing well” around the “convergence of performance” the FIA qualifying stats highlight. It can be argued the ATR impact is playing a positive role in this regard.

Ferrari’s Fred Vasseur says the 2022 changes helped teams at the back of the field (Bradley Collyer/PA Images via Getty Images)

The ATR and cost-cap rules will continue in 2026, but this time the central thrust of the car-design changes is not entirely about improving the product.

The engines have been simplified to attract new manufacturers, which F1 will have in Audi and (eventually) Cadillac, which starts the 2026 era as a Ferrari customer team: it will buy in engines until it produces its own from 2029.

But it is the way the new engines deliver their power that meant the aero rules had to change — to ensure the cars weren’t being slowed by the old bodywork surfaces creating too much drag. This is covered in the new “Corner Mode” and “Straight Mode” terminology announced by the FIA pre-Christmas.

Here, again, unintended consequences can be seen to be arising from a new ruleset, but the aims of boosted overtaking and close competition do live on. The 2026 rules have been crafted by the same FIA/FOM crew, although the 2022 set had more research and less team input than previous regulation changes, which often left them compromised.

Those rules are unlikely to be missed — F1 will soon discover if its latest changes will be more popular.