We Imagine: F1 Car 2020

Formula 1 car design will undergo more radical change in the next 10 years than in the last decade, according to the new F1 Racing magazine.

The magazine, revamped at the end of last year, has teamed up with Renault F1 chief designer Pat Symonds to give motorsport fans a glimpse of what the F1 car of 2020 will look like and how it will perform.

Low-profile tyres on bigger wheels, the return of ground effects aerodynamics, Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems (KERS) that produce 250bhp and a standard, non-downforce rear wing will all be components, according to Symonds.

The article, featured in Issue 179 of F1 Racing, theorises on how future regulation changes could lead to radically-different F1 designs.

The results take into account the likelihood of future rules on fuel consumption and CO2 emissions but assume that F1 will remain an open-wheel, open-cockpit formula.

F1 teams have already been instructed to reduce their fuel consumption by 35% in future generations of racing cars, while a more environmentally-friendly 1.6-litre turbo engine will be introduced for the 2013 season.

Symonds said: “Taking into consideration all the variant motivators that drive regulations, I expect that the F1 car of 2020 will demonstrate much more change than has been seen over the past 10 years.

“A few simple assumptions can determine the basic architecture of the car,” he explains. “By the time we add a few changes, such as larger wheels and low-profile tyres, we start to get a fairly clear picture of what the car might look like.

“The illustrations we’ve produced are certainly an artistic impression, but they capture the essential characteristics of a car that will be contesting the Formula 1 World Championship in 2020.”

Credits: wilswong