Formula One car development blog

Mercedes AMG have come out on track today at Barcelona with an updated nose cone, along with new mountings for the camera pods. Even though unconfirmed reports recently noted that the FIA asked Mercedes and Ferrari to revert to more traditional camera mountings, the team have now come up with small vertical carbon fibre supports to mount the cameras even higher above the nose cone. It moves the camera out of the airflow onto the front suspension, whereas the shape of the mounting's ... Read more

Jerez pre-season testing has definitely seen somewhat of a revival for the blown wheel nut, seeing that three of the major teams have introduced the system into their cars. All three of them also seem set to keep going with it, as none of these cars were seen with closed wheel nuts (yet).

Williams debuted this idea in 2013 on its Williams FW35, designed by Mike Coughlan. Having run it for the entire season, Williams opted against it in 2014. Is certainly triggered some interest with... Read more

Following a year of running with a very compact log style exhaust (as pictured) in 2014, Mercedes have now chosen to ditch the concept and go for a more conventional equal lenght exhaust manifold as seen on the 2014 Renault engine.

An obviously different noise coming from the Mercedes powered cars yesterday was followed by a further confirmation from Mercedes' Head of Engines at Brixworth, Andy Cowell that the new Mercedes 2015 power unit, named PU106B, features an 'entirely new exh... Read more

McLaren's long term wheel supplier, Enkei, has provided the team with new rims for the 2015 season, or at least the start of it. Finished in matte black, the wheels were on display at Jerez today, showing very different front and rear wheel designs. The reasons for this are obvious, with first of all wider tyres at the rear, but more importantly for their design, much less heat coming from the rear brakes. Due to weight transfer under braking, and the energy recovery system that kic... Read more

Lotus have unveiled their new 2015 nose concept, set to be tested in FP1 by one of their drivers. The team was undecided on Thursday who would debut it.

The design is the result of development for the team's 2015 car, named E23 Hybrid, and reflects the changed regulations that will effectively outrule the team's current twin tusk nose cone. Lotus have said they don't expect their interim nose to work effectively just yet, given that is has not been designed to work with the E22, but... Read more

Toro Rosso have come to Japan with a new nose cone on their STR9, which notably also included an S-duct inspired by Red Bull Racing. The car's new nose is much thinner on the lower side, now featuring a short bulb at the very front to meet the regulations while minimizing the obstruction to airflow underneath the nose cone. The previous 'finger nose' was much thicker and was an essential part of the front crash structure, whereas the new one has its crash structure starting further ... Read more

Lotus were seen racing at Monza with the smallest rear wing of any car. The team created a Monza-only rear wing, another alteration of the already fairly skinny rear wing seen at Spa-Francorchamps. The wing retains the V-shape in the middle of the wing, but different to most wings, the Monza spec does not extend to the maximum allowed height. Instead the upper flap is trimmed down, before a removable gurney flap was added. The nature of the wing also allowed the team to remove any r... Read more

Similar to most other teams, Williams have introduced a new, one-off rear wing to adapt to the requirements of the Monza Autodrome. Focusing on top speed, drag shedding is the easiest with a smaller rear wing, given that the rear wing generates much more drag per point of downforce compared top the diffuser. This also explains why teams are never modifying their diffuser, simply because it's more efficient and probably more complicated to alter as well.

The new rear wing fitted in t... Read more

Mercedes introduced a considerable update package at Spa, making sure they kept their advantage to the competition. Possibly the most important of those updates was the revamp of the car's nose cone which required a new crash test. The new solution is smaller at its bottom and also slightly higher at the top - note how the supports for the cameras have become shorter. This not only gave aerodynamic gains, but according to G. Piola this also helped to reduce weight, a feature that wa... Read more

It's a God's gift, Caterham's new nose cone on the CT05. While the visual appearance may not have been the top priority for the team in terms of aerodynamic development, the modified nose cone is a whole lot better looking that before. True, it could still be better, but such as the rules that strange looking noses are currently a good solution to keep airflow underneath the nose.

In any case, Caterham did not change much to the concept of its car, retaining the matte black cone tha... Read more