Grounded — The End of F1’s First Ground Effect Era (And What it Could Tell us About 2026)
Ground Effect is a term which will doubtless have become familiar to many Formula 1 fans in recent years.
In F1 parlance, the term typically refers to the use of a specially-shaped underfloor to channel air through a constriction before allowing it to exit through the car’s diffuser. This causes the air under the car to speed up and drop in pressure due to a phenomenon called the Venturi effect. Since the air underneath the car is at a lower pressure than that above the car, the air on top of the car literally presses the car into the track — which we know as downforce.
With major rule changes in 2022, Formula 1 turned to ground effect aerodynamics as part of an effort to improve the spectacle and quality of racing in the series. One of the key advantages of ground effect is that it allows cars to generate large amounts of downforce with relatively little disturbance to the air behind the car compared to traditional aerofoil-based methods of generating downforce.
It was therefore hoped that by encouraging teams to derive most of their downforce from the underfloor, the 2022 regulations would reduce the prevalence of so-called “dirty air” which had made following and overtaking difficult for previous generations of Formula 1 cars, which relied primarily on over-body wings to generate downforce.
Opinions have been divided on whether these measures actually improved racing however, and plans for the next regulation cycle have seen the FIA reducing dependence on ground effect principles by mandating that 2026 F1 cars feature partially flat underfloors with much shorter venturi tunnels. While not a total ban on ground effect, this nevertheless marks a departure from the aerodynamic principles which have formed the core of the most recent F1 regulation cycle.
Notably, this kind of move away from ground effect has been seen once before in Formula 1 history. Despite that move occurring over 40 years ago now, looking at its knock-on effects can give a surprising amount of insight into why the 2026 rule changes have been implemented the way they have, and how the new rules might affect the sport.
To say the impact of the team’s innovation was seismic would be an understatement. Lotus first won the championship with a ground effect car in 1978, and by the following season — a mere two years after ground effect’s Formula 1 debut — every rival team had either already followed Lotus’ lead in adopting ground effect, or had a car in the pipeline which did.
What followed was a development arms race. Ground effect had effectively reset aerodynamic knowledge back to square one, and every team now saw an opportunity to catapult themselves up the order if they could just figure out how best to exploit this revolutionary new principle.
One key factor which teams quickly hit upon in their quest to maximise ground effect was the need to prevent air from leaking into the low pressure area created by the car’s underfloor venturi tunnels, as such leakage would vastly reduce downforce.
The solution teams devised to this problem was remarkably low-tech. Unlike today’s ground effect cars which use complex aerodynamic flow conditioning elements to seal off the underfloor, first generation ground effect cars simply used floor-rubbing side skirts which were affixed to the bottom of the car’s sidepod, and physically blocked any air from leaking into the venturi tunnels.
Lotus initially tried various designs of skirt between 1977 and 1978, including brushes, rubber strips and polycarbonate panels. Eventually though they and their rivals converged upon spring-loaded skirts with ceramic rubbing strips, which proved to be capable of reliably sealing against an undulating track surface, even at 200mph.
With skirt design perfected but the ground effect arms race still ongoing, teams looked for other ways to gain the upper hand over their rivals. One area they soon realised could have a major performance impact in the new ground effect era was the position of the driver cockpit.
Conventional wisdom in the first half of the 1970s and earlier had been to place the cockpit relatively near the centreline of the car. This meant that the weight of the driver would be centralised too and have minimal impact on balance.
With ground effect however, situating the driver near the centre of the car took up room which could otherwise be devoted to larger downforce-generating venturi tunnels. As a direct result, cockpit positions of F1 cars began to creep further and further forwards, with some teams such as Alfa Romeo even opting to eliminate almost all frontal crash structure to attain the desired frontal driving position.
Many knew the safety implications of such design choices even at a glance, but for designers the performance benefits were hard to ignore. Sure enough, with such developments in tow, the first year of the 1980s proved to be the season that ground effect really took hold in Formula 1, with car performance reaching dizzying new heights.
The leap in performance which ground effect provided was aptly demonstrated by races such as the 1980 French Grand Prix at Paul Ricard, where Williams driver Alan Jones smashed the lap record (set in 1978 before the ground effect revolution had fully taken hold) by an astonishing seven seconds.
This increase in speed was also accompanied by high-quality racing action, with these new ultra-fast ground effect cars able to follow each other closely and battle for position lap after lap thanks to the efficient downforce which their venturi tunnels provided.
Simultaneously though, 1980 also proved to be the beginning of the end for ground effect in F1, thanks in no small part to the very refinements which had made the technology so potent in the first place.
Circuits of the time had simply not been designed to accommodate such speeds, while the cars themselves also lacked adequate safety measures to protect the driver during the kind of high-speed crashes which were becoming increasingly common. The result was a string of accidents throughout 1980 which badly marred the otherwise excellent racing on display.
At the third race of the season in South Africa for example, ATS driver Marc Surer badly injured his legs in a crash which put him out of action for four races. This was immediately followed by an even worse accident on the streets of Long Beach, where a collision with a parked car at the side of the circuit left former Ferrari driver and five-time race winner Clay Regazzoni with paralysis which confined him to a wheelchair for the rest of his life.
The subsequent death of Alfa Romeo driver Patrick Depailler in a testing accident at Hockenheim, and a fourth major crash for Renault’s Jean-Pierre Jabouille in Canada solidified an opinion within the FIA which had been growing all season that ground effect had made the sport too unsafe.
The FIA opted for a two-pronged approach to tackle the dangers posed by the new generation of cars, with a package designed to both slow cars down to reduce the possibility of a high speed accident, and also make them safer in the event that a crash did occur.
The first element of this new rules package was a mandatory strengthening of the cockpit area of all Formula 1 cars. This effectively constituted the first iteration of the modern day F1 survival cell, and put an end to ludicrously unsafe designs like the Alfa Romeo 179 and its exposed pedal box.
The other key component of the 1981 rule changes proved far more controversial however, and represented the first attempt by the FIA to walk back dependence on ground effect which had arisen over the previous four years.
This came in the form of a ban on the spring-loaded side skirts which had been used by all teams in 1980 — on grounds that they constituted movable aerodynamic devices. This was also accompanied by a rule specifying that all cars must have a full 6 centimetres of ground clearance between the bottom of their sidepods and the track, which seemed to put an end to the use of even static skirts.
Several teams were furious at the change. Perhaps most irate were the likes of Williams, Lotus, Brabham, and the rest of Bernie Ecclestone’s Formula One Constructor’s Association (FOCA).
These small, typically British “garagiste” teams had become utterly dependent on their knowledge of ground effect to make up for the power deficit suffered by their V8 Cosworth DFV engines compared to the 12-cylinder or turbocharged units used by their continental rivals. As a result, they saw the new rules as a cynical attempt by the FIA to swing the balance of power back towards the continental European teams, who were politically aligned with FIA subsidiary FISA in its battle with FOCA for control over Formula 1.
Desperate to cling to their advantage, several FOCA teams looked for ways to skirt (if you’ll pardon the pun) the new rules and retain at least some semblance of ground effect efficacy. Eventually, this search yielded several loopholes, with by far the most successful and influential being that devised by the Brabham team.
Brabham’s solution was as simple as it was ingenious. The team’s technical director Gordon Murray noticed that the 6cm ride height rule was only checked by the scrutineers when cars exited the pit lane. This meant that it was possible to circumvent the rule entirely when out on track by means of a system for lowering the car once out of the pitlane.
The rules forbade driver-operated systems to adjust ride height, but Murray was able to devise an automatic system based around hydraulic dampers which were compressed by the downforce generated by the car’s wings at speed. When paired with small rubbing strips on the bottom of the sidepods in place of the old sliding skirts, the result was very much comparable to the kind of performance teams had been achieving prior to the skirt ban and 6cm rule, while keeping within the letter of the law.
Brabham introduced their system from the second race of the 1981 season, and immediately looked like they would run away with that year’s title, claiming back-to-back wins in Argentina and San Marino.
Faced with the prospect of utter Brabham domination, the FIA made an unprecedented decision. They announced that from the Monaco Grand Prix onwards they would allow teams to have manually driver-adjustable suspension, which would mirror the effect of Brabham’s system without the need for the automatically adjusting setup which Murray had devised.
Brabham were incensed, but their complaints fell on deaf ears as their rival teams leapt to adopt the newly-legal ride height devices. Less than six months after its supposed ban, ground effect was back in Formula 1.
This new implementation of ground effect without spring-loaded skirts required some notable sacrifices however, and chief among these was suspension.
Teams quickly realised that without spring-loaded skirts, any suspension travel could cause the small rubbing strips along the bottom of the sidepod to break contact with the track. The result was a precipitous drop in downforce which would cost a huge amount of lap time.
Most teams therefore resolved to fit their cars with incredibly hard springs to minimise pitch and yaw under acceleration and braking. This gave the rubbing strips the best possible chance of making reliable contact with the ground, but also made for a punishing ride for the driver, and in many ways made the cars even less safe than they had been in 1980 with full, unfettered ground effect.
The danger posed by these new stiffly-sprung, rubbing strip-equipped cars was perhaps most prominently displayed during the weekend of the 1981 British Grand Prix, where two separate major accidents showed just how unforgiving these compromised cars could be.
The first crash came during Thursday practice, with the unlucky victim being Brian Henton in his Toleman TG181. Henton was looking to qualify the newly-upgraded Toleman car for its first race, and was pushing hard through the tricky Woodcote chicane at the very end of the lap when his car abruptly flew out of control and into the pit wall on the main straight.
After the crash, Henton laid blame for the accident at the foot of the new rules. He hypothesized that the small, inconsistent skirts on his TG181 had worn away throughout the lap and suddenly broken contact with the ground through the final chicane. With no downforce, Henton was rendered a mere passenger as his car hurtled into the wall.
The race itself delivered another accident which was seemingly caused or exacerbated by the way teams had adapted to the 1981 regulation changes.
The crash also happened to a far more prominent team and driver than Henton’s earlier crash, with the victim this time being the Ferrari of Gilles Villeneuve.
The crash occurred a mere four laps into the race, and once again the Woodcote chicane was the scene of the accident. This time though, rather than a problem with the small rubbing strip skirts, it was the rock solid suspension which most teams were using which proved to be Villeneuve’s undoing.
Desperately trying to wring performance from his downforce-deficient 126CK Ferrari, Villeneuve aggressively clouted the kerbs through the chicane. With his car’s suspension having almost no travel whatsoever due to the constraints imposed by needing to keep the small skirts in contact with the ground, this launched the back end of the Ferrari around into an irrecoverable spin.
The Williams of Alan Jones and McLaren of Andrea de Cesaris following close behind were powerless to avoid the fishtailing Villeneuve, and three cars found themselves out of the race thanks in large part to the compromised rules that the half-hearted attempt to curb ground effect had brought forth.
Thankfully no drivers were injured in the crash, and the entirety of 1981 passed without any fatalities despite several scares. Nevertheless, it was abundantly clear that the status quo which had developed in 1981 could not go on, both for political and safety reasons.
Anxious of looking like they were fully walking back the rule changes made in 1981 though, the FIA opted for a relatively minor adjustment to the regulations for 1982. The only major change was that they did away with the 6cm ride height restriction which had proven so controversial in 1981.
This meant that teams no longer needed to use hydropneumatic suspension to achieve ground effect, as they could now run as low to the ground as they wanted. It did nothing, however, to address the rock hard suspension and tiny, inconsistent skirts which had come to the fore over the course of the previous season.
Unfortunately, the FIA’s reluctance when it came to making major rule changes to slow the cars down and make them less susceptible to minor bumps and changes in track surface would have tragic consequences.
1982 proved to be an ultra-competitive season, with snarling turbocharged cars doing battle with nimbler but less powerful normally aspirated machines. Ordinarily this would be a recipe for a brilliant season, and indeed like in 1980 the racing on display was often fantastic.
With full ground effect again in force though, and cornering speeds higher than ever, the year was once again marred by major accidents which tragically proved 1981’s cockpit strengthening measures to be woefully inadequate.
The list of casualties in 1982 makes for grim reading as a result. Ferrari’s Gilles Villeneuve and young Osella driver Riccardo Paletti would both sadly lose their lives, while Villeneuve’s teammate Didier Pironi suffered career-ending injuries at Hockenheim. March’s Jochen Mass, Renault’s Rene Arnoux, and Brabham’s Riccardo Patrese also all suffered major crashes which sent them flying at high speed towards packed spectator areas at Paul Ricard, Zandvoort, and the Österreichring respectively.
Some of these accidents seemed merely like extremely unfortunate racing incidents, but Mass, Arnoux and Patrese’s shunts in particular looked concerningly similar to the type of crashes seen at the height of ground effect in 1980. When combined with the other tragedies of the 1982 season, they made crystal clear that the FIA needed to take far more drastic action than they had back in 1981 in order to improve the safety of a sport which was rapidly becoming more commercialised and professional.
It was this realisation which finally brought about the definitive end of F1’s first ground effect era, with the timing of the FIA’s eventual decision proving almost as drastic as the decision itself.
Teams did not receive news of the action that the governing body had taken until November 1982, by which time most teams were already well into the construction process for their 1983 cars. As a result, the FIA’s announcement dropped like a bombshell.
For 1983, ground effect aerodynamics would be banned entirely, with a mandate that all cars have totally flat undersides.
Compared to the half-hearted 1981 rule changes which left designers enough wiggle room to find ways of retaining almost all of their much-coveted ground effect downforce, the 1983 rules were largely watertight. Combined with the lateness of the announcement, what ensued was a mad-dash by all teams to meet the new rules, with some teams such as Brabham having to do away with cars which were almost entirely finished in order to start again.
By comparison, 2026’s planned reduction in ground effect has been a far less last-minute affair. With an official announcement occurring in June 2024, teams have at least a year and a half to prepare for the upcoming paradigm shift, and also have far greater aerodynamic knowledge and CFD tools than teams 42 years ago had at their disposal.
Nevertheless, the aftermath of F1’s first ground effect ban can provide some surprising insight into what the Formula 1 landscape may look like with less of the ground effect downforce that the sport has become so dependent on in the last few years.
Perhaps the most striking result of the 1983 ban on ground effect, and one which we could equally see occurring come 2026 was the diversity of designs which the rule changes brought about. From the iconic arrow shape of Brabham’s BT52, to Ferrari’s trend-setting rear wing extensions, the 1983 ground effect ban provided a panoply of distinctive F1 car silhouettes as designers threw ideas at the wall in an attempt to claw back lost downforce.
Many of these ideas went nowhere, but sometimes this approach led to the discovery of extremely influential design concepts, such as Renault’s introduction of F1’s first exhaust-blown diffuser from the 1983 Monaco Grand Prix onwards.
It might seem that this kind of innovation and diversity in design has fallen by the wayside in recent years as aerodynamic knowledge has become more refined and regulations more prescriptive. However, one need only look back to the most recent major regulation shake-up in 2022 to see how even in the modern era of F1, teams can come up with vastly different solutions to the challenges posed by radical new regulations.
Ferrari’s “bathtub” sidepods of that year, or Mercedes’ radical but flawed “zeropod” approach each act as particularly potent examples of this variety. With such examples in mind, along with knowledge of the variation which arose last time ground effect was done away with, it certainly seems possible that a similar state of affairs could arise come 2026. Even the prodigious Adrian Newey has stated that the 2026 regulations hold a “reasonable amount of flexibility” which could contribute to this variety.
This begs a further question though — what impact might the 2026 reduction in ground effect have on the competitive landscape in F1?
Concern in this area is certainly valid. With the ground effect rules of 2022 now fully mature, Formula 1 is currently enjoying something of a golden era when it comes to the closeness and competitiveness of the field. While there is something of a hierarchy just as there has been in seasons past, the gap between the fastest and the slowest car in 2025 is perhaps the smallest it has ever been in the history of the sport.
There has been much talk about the 2026 regulations potential disrupting this status quo. Some believe that the new rules will create an engine-centric formula, which will leave one manufacturer open to dominate as was seen with the major rule changes which occurred in 2014.
The possibility of domination is an ever-present threat when major regulation changes come around, but when it comes to a reduction in the prevalence of ground effect specifically, the precedent set by 1983 brings both good and bad news.
On the one hand, when ground effect was banned in 1983, its impact on the F1 pecking order was relatively minimal. For the most part even after the change, the same teams which were previously frontrunners maintained their positions.
The likes of Renault, Ferrari and Brabham for example all stayed competitive from 1982 into 1983, while teams such as McLaren and Williams took a step backwards but nevertheless still won races in 1983 just as they had done the year prior.
However, the 1983 rule changes did notably contribute to creating an engine-centric rules Formula, just as some fans and pundits are concerned the 2026 regulations may.
Without the underfloor venturi tunnels needed for ground effect, teams in 1983 turned to large front and rear wings in order to create downforce. These did claw back some of the lost downforce compared to the 1982 cars, but came at the penalty of large amounts of drag compared to the super-efficient downforce which came from ground effect.
As a result, a powerful engine became extremely important in order to overcome that drag. 1982 had already seen turbocharged engines establishing themselves in Formula 1, but with the 1983 rules they now became dominant. This was the reason that previous frontrunning teams like Williams and McLaren fell back somewhat in 1983, as at least initially both lacked a turbocharged power unit.
In terms of pure performance, banning ground effect also had a major impact. While the developments in turbocharged engines made the gap smaller than it otherwise might have been, 1983’s F1 cars were still substantially slower than those which took advantage of ground effect. Keke Rosberg’s pole position time of 1:09.540 for the 1982 British Grand Prix, for example, was some 2.5 seconds faster than Elio de Angelis’ 1:12.092 pole lap for the following year’s European Grand Prix at the same circuit.
2026’s regulations are likewise expected to result in a similar drop in downforce to that seen in 1983, with official F1 sources quoting an anticipated 30% reduction in overall downforce compared to the 2025 cars which are currently breaking lap records at several circuits.
However, this brings us to one of the key differences between the 1983 regulation changes and those which are set to come into force in 2026.
In 1983, an increase in drag and reduction in speed — particularly down the straights and in high speed corners — was the entire reason for the regulation changes, as the FIA sought increased safety in the face of the tragedies outlined earlier in this article. The fact that this contributed to creating an engine-centric formula was not seen as particularly important.
For 2026 however, FIA have taken a very different tack. Rather than increasing safety, the FIA’s goal for 2026 is to to improve the spectacle of Formula 1. The new rules package therefore includes features actually aimed at increasing the speed of cars down straights through the use of active aerodynamic “X-mode” which flattens out the car’s front and rear wing elements to cut drag.
This is paired with a so-called “override mode” for the car’s energy recovery system which effectively replaces the current drag reduction system and provides an electrical power boost to cars which are closely following a rival. The hope is that these two elements will combine to minimise the impact of the lost ground effect downforce on lap times, while also providing opportunities for drivers to overtake and duel on track.
Indeed, the increase in lap times for 2026 is predicted to only be in the region of 1 second per lap when compared with 2025 cars. This is thanks in large part to the 2026 machines purportedly having 55% less drag than their predecessors, thanks to both the active aerodynamics, and also an overall reduction in car and tyre width which reduces frontal area compared to a 2025 F1 car. If viewed charitably, this may lessen the possibility of the much-feared engine formula coming about.
For the time being though, all of the impacts of the 2026 regulation changes, both positive and negative, remain only theoretical. Only when the 2026 cars finally hit the track for the first time will we begin to understand the impacts of the sweeping rule changes.
While that kind of uncertainty naturally breeds speculation of both a positive and negative nature, F1 fans can at least take heart in the fact that the sport has been through these kind of seismic regulations shifts before and come safely out of the other side.
The 1983 ground effect ban is a textbook example of that fact, and it even seems that the lessons provided by that season and others like it have had a key influence on the way the FIA has approached the 2026 regulations package.
It appears therefore that even more than forty years on, F1’s history can still provide useful insight into its future direction…
