The new kit will be adopted as standard by all teams, who have busied themselves with understanding the new system during testing.
However that’s not the only significant change over the off-season, which has seen plenty of intriguing team and driver moves.
Reigning champion Ash Sutton’s move from Laser Tools Racing to Motorbase Performance under the NAPA Racing banner, where he’ll be joined by series returnee Dan Cammish, was the subject of Autosport magazine’s season preview issue (21 April).
But with tin-top rising star Jake Hill joining Colin Turkington at West Surrey Racing, Tom Chilton returning to his front-wheel drive roots at Excler8 Motorsport and Jason Plato joining BTC Racing for his swansong year, there are set to be plenty of storylines to follow throughout the season.
Autosport picks out the five major plot points to watch out for.
1. Dawn of hybrid means sunset for success ballast
Jake Hill, MB Motorsport BMW 330e M Sport
Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images
The new Cosworth hybrid kit, including battery, has raised the base weight for cars by 70kg, but it does mean that each driver can benefit from a 10% increase in power – once a car has reached 120km/h (75mph) – for 15 seconds per lap.
It also means that the largely unpopular old success-ballast system has been done away with. Now, instead of adding weight to leading competitors, series organiser TOCA will cut the hybrid deployment available.
For each qualifying session from round two at Brands Hatch onwards, the championship leader will not be allowed any hybrid use, and this increases in 1.5-second increments for second to 10th in the standings up to the full 15s for 11th downwards.
In races below 17 laps, the championship leader prior to race one each weekend will have their hybrid use cut by 10 laps, decreasing in one-lap increments for the rest of the top 10. In races over 17 laps, the scale is 15-13-11-9-7-5-4-3-2-1. As with the old ballast system, this is reapplied to the top 10 in…
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