Did the Rules Actually Produce Closer Racing?
By the metric the rules were designed to move, the answer is yes, measurably. Across the 2021 season, cars completed 599 genuine on-track overtakes, counting only passes that did not involve pit stops or mechanical retirements. In 2022, over the same 22-race calendar length, that number rose to 785, a 31 percent increase. Pirelli's own internal tracking, using a slightly different counting method, arrived at a similar conclusion, reporting roughly a 30 percent rise in overtakes from 2021 to 2022.
Race broadcasts from that season reflected the shift qualitatively as well as statistically: multiple cars racing wheel to wheel for several laps at a stretch, trading positions more than once in the same corner, became a regular occurrence rather than an occasional highlight. That said, the same season also produced a wider performance gap between the fastest and slowest teams than 2021 had, since ground-effect floors turned out to reward precise aerodynamic development even more than the previous wing-based rules did, meaning closer racing between similarly matched cars did not necessarily translate into a tighter overall field.
