F1 is definitely trying to make the teams and their engineering more similar than different, why do you think the whole regulation part exists even? [1] If they were to be allowed to build whatever they want, F1 would have looked very different than how it looks today.

F1 (FIA really) has been using regulation to improve the sports safety, but lately they also used regulation in order to regulate how much each team spends on engineering, both money-wise and time-wise. This is to make things more equal between the teams.

- [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formula_One_regulations#Techni...