What’s new in F1’s 2025 regulations?

Formula 1’s 2025 season, the last of the current ruleset, will kick off in Australia as Albert Park hosts the season opener – and there’s a handful of changes to the regulations to be aware of once the cars hit the road.

Although the 2026 season promises arguably the biggest shift in F1’s technical regulations for some time, since both the rules governing chassis and powertrain development will come into play simultaneously, the rule book has been somewhat static since the current generation of cars was introduced in 2022.

Arguably the largest tweak emerged for the 2023 season as the floor height and fences were trimmed by 15mm, and the diffuser ‘throat’ (the point at which the diffuser begins to expand) was raised by 10mm. This was part of a widespread effort to minimise the effect of porpoising seen in the rules’ maiden season, which first began midway through 2022 with the introduction of an “oscillation metric” to ensure the cars were not moving up and down excessively.

Those changes are generally assumed to have been effective, meaning that the FIA has not had to stage any further interventions – at least until 2024’s controversies over flexing aerodynamics started to emerge from the woodwork.

Originally, the governing body was reluctant to do so, but their continued use and concerns from teams more eager for the discipline of aeroelasticity to be mitigated led to changes being implemented for 2025.

This also follows the introduction of driver cooling systems, which will be used in races where the governing body declares that the temperatures are suitable for them to avoid drivers suffering from heat-related illnesses afterwards. This has its roots in the 2023 Qatar Grand Prix, where a handful of drivers ended up hot-footing it to the medical centre amid the conditions.

New wing regulations

Both front and rear wings will be subject to revised regulations to quell the flexi-wing furore that flared last season.

The rear wing is now subject to flex tests that will take effect from the season-opening Australian Grand Prix. The mainplane now cannot flex more than 6mm in the direction of the load applied, while the upper flap cannot move more than 7mm when load is applied horizontally. Furthermore, the rear wing’s trailing edge can only yield a 3mm maximum flex.

Dimensional regulations to the rear wing have also been revised; the slot gap between the two wing elements has been reduced from a 10-15mm range to 9.4-13mm. With DRS open, the upper boundary remains at 85mm.

To minimise the chance of teams exploiting the “mini-DRS” effect that McLaren used to great effect in Baku, where the front corners of the upper wing flap raised slightly to bestow the MCL38 with a minor top speed advantage, the regulations now mandate that the wing is subject to only two states: DRS on, and DRS off. The slot-gap size must not only fit within the boundaries set out by rules, but stay static within either mode. For example, a wing with a defined 10mm slot gap size is not permitted to expand to 13mm while the car is on track.

Article 3.10.10 in the 2025 technical regulations states that: “Except in the event of a DRS failure or the transitioning from one position into the other, the DRS bodywork can have only 2 positions, such that the DRS bodywork position must be the same before and after each state of deployment. The transition time between the 2 positions must be less than 400ms.”

The front wing’s new flex tests will not take effect until the Spanish Grand Prix, giving the teams some leeway to maintain their pursuit of flexing front wings for the opening eight races of the season before switching to a more rigid spec at Barcelona. This will cut the maximum vertical flex allowed in the tests from 15mm to 10mm with a 1000N load.

Furthermore, the individual wing elements’ trailing edges cannot currently flex by more than 5mm with a perpendicular 60N load, which will be reduced to 3mm in Spain.

Minor weight increase and driver cooling equipment

Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari SF-25

Photo by: Ferrari

A 2kg increase to the minimum driver weight will raise the overall minimum weight of an F1 car to 800kg, and any ballast used to achieve the minimum weight must now be made of a material with a density of 7500kg/m³ – down from the previous 8000kg/m³ permitted.

In the event of the FIA declaring a “heat hazard” – from 31C ambient temperatures, as given by an average of the FIA’s temperature sensors at the circuit – the minimum weight will automatically be increased by 5kg to cover for the increased mass of the driver cooling equipment and external battery used to power it.

This will be produced by Chillout Motorsports, and comprises of a fireproof underlay shirt with 48m of tubing through which cooled liquid flows – connected to a internally mounted control box that cools and pumps the fluid into the shirt. The fluid may be air, water, or an aqueous solution of sodium chloride, potassium chloride or propylene glycol. The refrigerant in the system must also have a global warming potential value of less than 10.

Currently, the cooling system is not mandatory, although the weight limit will still be applicable – with 500g of ballast to be positioned within the cockpit area. As the system will be fully integrated into the 2026 package, it will become necessary for all drivers to wear it, should any races be declared with a heat hazard.

No more fastest-lap point: sporting regulation changes

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing, Isack Hadjar, RB F1 Team

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

One of the bigger changes to the 2025 format comes with the deletion of the championship point given for the fastest lap of the race, which was awarded as long as the holder finished within the top 10.

Although intended to give drivers more reason to take risks during the race to secure an extra point, too often has it been either awarded to a driver who simply changed tyres late on if they had built up a pit-stop window to the car behind, or subject to gamesmanship and taken away by a runner outside of the points-scoring places to boost their championship standing.

Monaco also gets its own special section in the sporting regulations following the decision to mandate two-stop races at the principality. In dry weather conditions, the two-compound mandate still applies, and any driver who fails to complete both stops will receive a 30-second penalty to their race time.

Restrictions on the testing of previous cars (TPC) have also been tightened up. Teams are allowed to nominate only one car for TPC duties and are no longer permitted to test at a circuit within 60 days of it being used in the current championship.

At one team, the race drivers can cumulatively undertake TPC testing for only 1000km per calendar year over four days; Ferrari appeared to use up its own allotment for race drivers Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton before the season had begun.

The FIA has also closed up loopholes pertaining to formation laps and damaged cars, and any cars starting from the pitlane must now join the rest of the field for the formation lap before returning to the pit exit for the start.

Furthermore, to avoid the situation faced at Canada last year when Sergio Perez continued on track despite heavy damage to his Red Bull RB20, the race director will be able to order a driver to pull over and stop if they have significant damage to the car.

The rule states that “any driver whose car has significant and obvious damage to a structural component which results in it being in a condition presenting an immediate risk of endangering the driver or others, or whose car has a significant failure or fault which means it cannot reasonably return to the pitlane without unnecessarily impeding another competitor or otherwise hindering the competition, must leave the track as soon as it is safe to do so.

“At the sole discretion of the race director, should a car be deemed to have such significant and obvious damage to a structural component, or such significant failure or fault, the competitor may be instructed that the car must leave the track as soon as it is safe to do so.”

Restrictions on the quantity of gearboxes used over a season have now been deleted in the regulations, as the FIA is satisfied that the reliability has rendered these moot.