Formula One car development blog

The Williams FW34 appeared at Singapore with a new nosecone design, featuring a bulge underneath the tip of the nose, in between the front wing supports. Force India have run a similar, but more pronounced bulge during the entire 2011 season on their VJM04. If not for aerodynamic benefit, the bulge can also enable the team to make the nose slightly heavier.

The front edge of the nose has changed as well, now more rounded and extending further ahead of the camera hubs that are still ... Read more

Mercedes AMG has become the latest team to adopt a downwash exhaust outlet. After having already tested it on track during the most recent young driver test at Magny-Cours, the W03 was immediately fitted with the new exhaust layout in Singapore and was also found good enough to race.

The team's design very much resembles that of the Ferrari F2012 where a bulge on the side of the sidepod incorporates the upward pointing exhaust pipe. The U-channel behind it attempts to prevent the ex... Read more

McLaren have run two interesting wing packages at both Spa and then Monza, two circuits known for their high speed straights, with Spa adding a high number of medium speed corners to the mix.

At the Belgian GP, McLaren had a medium downforce rear wing ready for both drivers, but only Jenson Button decided to use it - and he went on to win the Grand Prix with ease. The rear wing featured an upward curve on the leading edge of the wing, causing a lower pressure difference between the ... Read more

McLaren have brought quite an interesting update to Spa as they have changed the way to tackle airflow around the top and edges of the sidepod. Previously, the car's sidepod featured a fairly traditional, vertical and solid sidepod panel. Since the Spanish GP, the leading edge of the top of the sidepods featured two or three vertical fins - as on the Lotus - to better manage airflow that will eventually end up streaming over the exhaust outlet.

This time around, McLaren ditched the ... Read more

McLaren's car updates have pushed the car back up in between the front runners, and unsurprisingly, the improvement came once again from exhaust modifications. McLaren redesigned the sidepod to have the exhaust exit lower above the ground and further back, creating a more consistent flow onto the outer extremities of the diffuser.

In essence, McLaren's update appears to be influenced by Ferrari's famous acer ducts, something which the MP4-27 now features as well. The ducts are slopi... Read more

Since their major car update at the European GP in Valencia, Ferrari have been testing a new version of its front wing. Since then, the wing has appeared in every free practice session on Friday and Saturday, on both cars, but at no occasion has it been used to race. While the visual changes do not seem to be major, the new wing certainly has an interesting influence on the car's balance given that the team prefer to test it a little bit longer. Of course, the rain in Silverstone an... Read more

Amidst a large number of updates brought to Valencia, Ferrari changed the mirror supports to gain an aerodynamic effect from those as well. In the image, Massa is pictures on Friday with the old supports which is a neutral element with its length as short as possible to keep drag low.

The new version, as in the upper part of the image shows how Ferrari modified the supports to be aligned with the vortex generators at each side of the cockpit.

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