Wake Turbulence (Cleaner-Air Regs)
VerifiedThe 2022 aero rules aimed to make a car's disturbed wake less punishing for the car following it, reducing (not eliminating) the dirty-air penalty.
Every car leaves behind a wake of disturbed, lower-energy air. The 2022 regulations moved most of the downforce generation from wings (which throw off messy, high-turbulence wake) to the floor and diffuser (whose wake is comparatively smoother), specifically to reduce how badly a following car's aero suffers in traffic.
It worked, to a degree: teams and drivers broadly agreed cars could follow more closely than under the previous generation of rules. It didn't remove the effect entirely; a car in another's wake still loses downforce, just less catastrophically than before.
This is a genuinely different aero era from the pre-2022 cars, which is part of why older seasons' overtaking and following data doesn't map cleanly onto current-generation racing.