Formula 1 heads into the 2022 season with a new set of regulations that introduce the next generation of single-seaters. Written with the aim of encouraging overtaking and get more on-track action, the new rules were written relying on AWS’ – Amazon Web Services – cloud technology.

"It has somewhat revolutionised and transformed the way that the FIA were able to write the rules," F1's lead engineer Rob Smedley told Motorsport.com.

"The key technological barrier was that we needed to have a CFD simulation with two cars,” to be able to test out the impact the aerodynamic wake of a car has on another.

"A CFD simulation with one car, if you run that under the team's aerodynamic test restrictions, then that half car with something like 200 cores is around about five hours,” he explained.

"And just to geek out for a minute: that's about 100 million cells within that simulation. When you go to a full car, you get up to about 200-250 million cells. So using the 192 cores of the team's simulation, that then puts that full car up to 14 hours.”

"If we wanted to use that same technology and computational power within the teams, then a two-car simulation with double the number of cells gets you to 550-600 million cells - and that would be four days.”

"So when we first set off on this journey, it was four days to do a single iteration. It's just something that's prohibitive. It's a barrier to the research and development needed."

Relying on the AWS’ scalability to run CFD - Computational Fluid Dynamics- simulations meant a significant save of time and money for Formula 1, as it reduced simulation time from days to hours.

"I think the first iteration was spinning up in their EC2 service, at 1000/1100 cores, and version two, we're up to about 2500 cores," said Smedley.

"It got that design iteration down from four days to around about six to eight hours.We were back to the same situation of where the teams are when they do a half car, and we were doing full two car simulations.

"The progress there in terms of tech was massive. That was enabled by us partnering with AWS and they were the real enablers and the key ingredient there to make that work.”

"But the point was we had to get the simulations and the iterations done at a fast enough speed. That design loop was as fast as we could go in order to keep up and be able to write the rules in a way that we have."

 Smedley believes the concept car Formula 1 has created is going in the right direction.

"Certainly the concept, the aerodynamic architecture of what we're trying to create here with a semi ground effect car and an upwashing wake, that is undoubtedly the direction that we needed to take if we wanted to reduce the effect of the wake on the car behind,” he continued.

"So, from a theoretical or a scientific point of view, there's no doubt that the concept is fundamentally sound.”

This, however, does not mean team will not end up wrecking FIA’s intentions in their quest to maximise performance by exploring grey areas, just like in 2009.

"The fundamental truth is the teams will chase performance as quickly as they can, in whatever direction they can, and it's possible obviously that they will find performance, which is unhelpful to the car behind - and they won't go out of their way to stop that," commented Smedley.

"I think that's the beauty of F1. If you knew all the answers right now and we sat down and we've worked it all out, certainly for me and for people like me, F1 would become quite boring.”

Formula 1 is indeed ready to make adjustments along the way where needed.

"It's like Ross Brawn always says, we can't hope to get it right first off. But let's have a look to see that we've made a step forward.”

"And if we've made a step forward, and then there's more fundamental steps we can take after that, after one year of learning in 2022, that's great.”

"Let's continue to do that and let's just continue to build a better sport."