Formula One car development blog

Given that the FIA declared Caterham's exhaust vane and Williams' exhaust bridge illegal, both teams have opted to back out of the option and not risk being disqualified at the Australian GP, the first race of the season where cars will be fully checked on their compliance with the technical regulations. Both teams simple bolted different parts on their cars, knowing that for both the CT03 as well as the FW35 the contested items were easily removable.

The image clearly shows the lac... Read more

Williams technical director Mike Coughlan has clearly been looking near the boundaries of the regulations to find ever more performance while designing the FW35. Today at Barcelona the car appeared with open wheel nuts, contrary to the traditional pointy ones as can be seen in the inset.

By using wheel nuts, which are btw integrated into the new Rays magnesium alloy wheels, the team can push air through the hollow wheel axle. This means that part of the air caught by the brake ducts... Read more

Williams and Caterham have created a stir during winter testing as both the Williams FW35 and the earlier launched Caterham CT03 feature elements within the exhaust channels. In both cases, the exhaust tailpipe exits into a channel that is part of the sidepod's aerodynamic shell. The channel is designed in a manner that exhaust gases are curved down towards the car's floor as much as possible. Such exhausts, named Coanda according to the identically named principle that a fluid (in ... Read more

Already at the US GP in Austin 7 days ago, Mercedes AMG surprised by fitting Nico Rosberg's car with the old exhaust solution, favouring it over the Coanda solution that the team development following the example of McLaren. In Austin, the team wanted to do a direct on-track comparison to see the benefits and disadvantages of the Coanda exhaust solution. It is no secret that ever since its introduction, the team failed to get it to work properly, while the downwash of the exhaust ga... Read more

McLaren have made a fairly major change in front wing design with their newest iteration introduced at the American GP in Austin. The new design drops a few McLaren-only styling elements, such as the sharp steps in the wing's main plane, as well as removing the r-winglet.

Generally speaking, the new design, and particularly the items that were changed appear to be inspired on Lotus F1's front wing. Therefore, the new wing features curves in the main plane, leading to a very differen... Read more

As announced earlier this week, Lotus F1 have finally introduced their new Coanda style exhaust on the E20. It was tested by Kimi Raikkonen only during FP1 at the Korean International Circuit.

The layout very much resembles that of McLaren's downwash exhaust, however on the Lotus it does feature only a very minor bulge, instead the exhaust channel is almost seemlessly integrated into an unchanged sidepod shape. Another interesting detail is the metallic channel used by the team inst... Read more

Although subtle, McLaren have introduced a minor change on the car. The winglet, just above the radiator air inlet, is effectively a connection between the sidepod panel and the monocoque.

The new winglet is a positioned a little higher above the sidepod aims to control airflow just above the sidepod, a crucial area to ensure efficiency of the downwash exhaust.

Red Bull introduced a considerable number of changes on its car at Singapore, including a new front wing, diffuser and DDRS. Perhaps of a little less importance, but still interesting is their new nose cone. Just like Williams did, the new nose has a slight bulge below the nose, in the middle of the nose but just behind the front wing pillars. Overall the tip of the nose on the Red Bull is also slightly lower, resulting in more airflow over the nose and less under it.

Such change is... Read more

Ferrari is more and more struggling to keep up with the development pace of other teams, with Singapore being no exception. The team brought a new rear wing featuring interesting changes, but after testing both the new and the previous wing on Friday by applying flow-vis paint, the Italians opted to use the older version on both cars as the new one did not bring the improvement the team had hoped for.

The new wing features a lot more slots in the endplate (the old wing is displayed ... Read more

Red Bull Racing debuted a new front wing on the RB8, featuring two changes. The first of which is the addition of an extra slot where the front wing is ahead of the wheels. This means a little bit more air will reach the underside of the flap, filling the low pressure area underneath the front wing. Although this can add downforce at the front, its most important function is likely to be better control of the airflow around the front wheel, hence the front wheel's wake and underneat... Read more