Formula One car development blog

The Spanish HRT team came up with a special rear wing aimed to achieve better top speeds at the end of the straights of Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. While that in itself is not special, the actual design is, because it's been a while since we saw such a tiny rear wing on an F1 car. The wing is especially impressive with DRS open, where it generated very little downforce, but also a little drag as possible.

The wing did pay off, as HRT was among the fastest cars on the straight, but un... Read more

Williams designed a new one-off low downforce rear wing for the Canadian GP, which unfortunately for the team didn't pay off. In fact the special rear wing did not offer a big top speed improvement, at least not compared to what other teams came up with. During qualifying for instance - which is of course always with DRS open at the speed trap, the drivers posted 318.8 and 317.8 km/h, good for 19th and 20th positions on the top speed rankings.

Interesting as well is how this is a co... Read more

Red Bull Racing fitted Vettel's RB8 with an interesting aerodynamic evaluation system. While a grid of pressure sensors is not quite new as many teams have been using that during tests since a few years, it is however interesting to see how Red Bull made a custom grid that perfectly fits the shape of the sidepod, allowing to measure the flow speed in the boundary layer around the sidepod as well as further above the car's body. The grid features 34 individual sensors, each connected... Read more

As was expected, Ferrari have fitted their F2012 with yet another version of their exhaust exits. When the cars were being unpacked on Thursday at Canada, the Ferrari featured an exhaust that is extremely similar to McLaren's design.

The Italian has been struggling with its car since the very beginning of the season, and Pat Fry was quoted at the Mugello test that the team would be introducing a new design at the Canadian GP for evaluation. While it is not clear if the car will comp... Read more

Lotus continues its intensive development programme at Barcelona by introducing a new floor, along with this updated front wing. Compared to last year, where Lotus found many updates not working on its car, it seems the team is back on the right track by pushing developments at every venue so far this season. Part of this is thanks to some testing in the Windshear facility in the USA, which Eric Bouillier dubbed as a certain improvement in the development process of the car.

The upd... Read more

Since their dismal Bahrain GP where the team only caught a mere few points, McLaren have introduced several new parts on its car, mainly on the front end. Team principal Martin Whitmarsh commented earlier this week that regulations are now so strict that there is often more to gain by optimizing the front in order to get more quality air to the rear of the car, rather than actually developing the rear.

Already on Friday at Barcelona, the team's car featured a new, raised nose after ... Read more

As was widely anticipated, Ferrari today debuted another version of its exhausts in an attempt to resolve some of the car's issues that have hampered its drivers to fight at the front during the first 4 races. The change, although quite dramatic compared to what the Ferrari had so far, shows that the Scuderia continues to follow its very own path in this area.

After relentless experimentation with exhausts inside the well known acer ducts, the new design blows the exhaust gases out ... Read more

Force India have today tested their VJM05 with a different nose, altering only the position of the mandatory nose cameras. Where previously the cameras were position on each side of the tip of the nose, the new nose is now nicely rounded. Instead, the cameras are now ahead and below of the steering arms.

While experimenting with camera positions, the team is likely to try out positioning the cameras in between the front wing pillars, similar to what McLaren, Ferrari and Marussia wer... Read more

Although Ferrari is now mainly concentrating on redesigning the exhaust layout, other car updates are also still being developed according a development plan set out before the season. One of these updates includes a changed rear wing, used as of the Chinese GP.

The wing elements themselves have been slightly modified around the new gap separators. The Melbourne spec rear wing only had a single gap separator, visible by a single vertical edge running all around the lower and upper p... Read more

Williams have been running all winter with front brake ducts that seemingly contain no inlet duct. The same sort of duct was seen at Melbourne, although, as visible in the inset, Williams added a flow conditioner on the lower part of the upright compared to the most recent winter test at Barcelona.

As marked in the main image, the trick is to have the inlet in between the tyre wall and the duct's vertical element. The few centimeters of clearance between the tyre wall and the carbon... Read more