After several years of discussions and complaints Formula 1’s new-for-2019 regulations regarding driver weight should, in theory, equalise the field of 20 drivers.
Driver weights have always been contentious in the championship due to the inequality between the racers, on account of their varying heights.
It is beneficial for a driver to be as light as possible in order to optimise the set-up and balance to the best degree, while also ensuring that the car is not overweight – and teams rarely build cars that are over the minimum weight limit, for obvious reasons.
It has often been joked that the perfect driver for an engineer is someone who is 5ft tall and weighs around 50kg, giving them greater scope with which to adapt set-up for the greatest car performance, placing ballast in the prime positions in order to reach the minimum car weight limit.
But this is not always possible. And a handful of drivers stand at over 6ft tall, meaning that they cannot be as lean as their rivals, contain the required muscle mass, and operate in an entirely healthy fashion.
The most extreme example was in 2014, when Adrian Sutil revealed he had experimented by not eating for two days – taking in only water – in a bid to reduce his weight.
Nico Rosberg credited a crucial pole position at the 2016 Japanese Grand Prix to his decision to stop cycling in the summer, reducing leg muscle, and therefore giving engineers greater scope for ballast distribution.
Marcus Ericsson raced without a water bottle in his car due to the extra weight that the 1.5kg container – when full – would have cost him in terms of race performance.
It is not a new issue – for example, Mark Webber was at a natural disadvantage compared to Sebastian Vettel during their Red Bull days – but finally Formula 1 is trying to level the playing field.
The driver weight was previously part of the overall car weight but from this year this will, in effect, be split.
The minimum weight of each Formula 1 car, without fuel, stands at an increased 743kg this year, of which a minimum of 80kg must be the driver, their racing equipment (ie suit, helmet and gloves) and their seat. Teams will still be permitted to locate ballast elsewhere should the minimum 80kg driver weight and car weight stand below the minimum overall mark of 743kg.
For example, should a shorter driver weigh only 65kg then 15kg of ballast must be fitted adjacent to their seat. The ‘reference weight’ of a driver will be determined at the opening round of the World Championship in Australia and assessed regularly thereafter to ensure that no driver gains an unfair advantage through artificially inflating their weight.
The hope is that a driver+equipment+seat combination will be fixed at 80kg (or as close to 80kg as possible for the heavier/taller drivers), meaning that taller drivers will no longer be penalised purely because of height. It should also mean that drivers, while still eating healthily as per the norm for athletes, will no longer have to stick to such inflexible regimes.
"I don't see my healthy eating changing, I just generally like to eat well," said reigning World Champion Lewis Hamilton. "My comfortable weight is a little bit heavier than where I am, and every year all the drivers, particularly I guess the slightly taller ones, they're under more pressure to get thinner and skinnier and unhealthy. The rule is changing, which I think is cool. I'm excited to go and eat, increase my intake, I can be a little bit heavier [in 2019], I can be a lot stronger.
Hamilton’s rivals concurred with his stance.
“It’s not like we’re going to, let’s say, take the piss,” says Renault’s Daniel Ricciardo, whose team-mate Nico Hulkenberg is among the taller drivers. “It’s more just a lot of us now tend to starve ourselves on race weekends and even training we can’t really do much strength training because we would just put on mass. I think it will just allow us to train harder, eat more. But it’s not like we’re going to have beer bellies or anything, we’re just going to be stronger and I think that’s only a good thing.”
Added Haas’ Romain Grosjean: “I think it hasn’t been great to starve ourselves and not eat as want to, so a few kilos of margin is going to be great.
“It will be a challenge for the team, because getting to the minimum weight for the regulation with the 80 kilos for seat and driver together is going to be tricky, but on the other hand it’s going to make our lives an awful lot better.”