Formula 1 is due to announce regulation changes for 2021 season in order to make it more competitive, balanced and of course entertaining. Suggested changes include things like a budget cap and more standardised parts. Here are some things I’d do, with very little regard as to how feasible they actually are.

Reduce the size of the cars

Current car width is 2m and the length around 5.7m.

In 2007 cars were 1.8m wide and 4.5m long.

That might not seem like a huge difference but in terms of surface area that’s a 30% difference.

That affects overtaking as well as how quickly they’re able to turn in corners.

Having the length be below 5m would make a huge difference I think.

Instead of regulating number of elements, regulate the total surface area or volume

Now regulations specify numbers of elements and boxes within which elements need to fit.

This inevitably leads to teams fitting increasingly more complicated elements (each of which counts as one technically) that fit within the regulation boxes.

Regulating volume or total surface area of elements would reduce their complexity of each element and teams would have to focus on finding different things instead of just piling on elements.

At the end of the season the winner has to share designs

At the end of the season other teams get access to at least some of the designs of the winners’ cars. Perhaps even to the top three teams’ cars.

Probably the engine would be off-limits but there’s no reason why aero couldn’t be shared. Or setup. Or suspension. These are all bespoke parts.

Maybe the other teams would vote on a number of parts that they want revealed instead of the entire car.

Penalties that apply to next race

In the interest of “letting them race” perhaps penalties could be applied to the following race instead of the current. Further, perhaps the penalties could be applied towards the qualifications of the next race. Instead of a 5s penalty for current race, have a 0.5% time to Q3 of the next race.

You let the drivers race during the race but penalize them outside of the race. A 1% penalty to best time would add a second and might even be considered very harsh.

Re-introduce refueling

I understand it was removed for safety reasons and with good cause but it is undeniable that it added another dimension to the strategy.

It could be reintroduced by replacing the entire fuel tank during the race. Teams would have two fuel tanks per car. They’d fill them in the garage before the race and before the pit stop. During the pit stop, one tank just would be swapped with another.

I think it’s important because it adds a component of the strategy that’s entirely unknown to the other teams and makes it much more difficult to accurately predict what strategy the opponent is running.