Formula One car development blog

Lotus have started the season in anger with an impressive amount of car developments. Already at Australia the team brought a new front wing, while this time in Malaysia there is another new front wing, along with this heavily modified sidepod bodywork, fitted only on Kimi Raikkonen's car. Raikkonen will continue the weekend with the new layout but Romain Grosjean will have to wait until the next race as the team were unable to get two pieces ready.

The new sidepods are a rather lar... Read more

As if it was still 2012, Lotus have kicked off the new season by introducing a brand new front wing on their E21. The team has been focusing on front wing development for years, and with seemingly great results, as performance has steadily improved in recent seasons.

The new front represents another fairly major step, with modified endplates and a more flat stacked panel. The most interesting feature of the front wing may however be the thickness of the lower flap, painted in black ... Read more

Ferrari have used their new front wing debuted at the final Barcelona test throughout the entire Australian GP weekend, showing it confirmed the new part to be an improvement for the car. When comparing this to last year, where the Scuderia had various new parts tested that eventually failed to work in real life, the new parts coming from Toyota's wind tunnel appear to be working straight away. This alone is a great sign for Ferrari that will build confidence within the team.

The ne... Read more

Lotus has had quite a busy schedule recently, and today the team came up with a new rear wing, tested both by Davide Valsecchi in the morning and Romain Grosjean in the afternoon. The new wing appears to be based on the rear wing that the team has already used when running without DRD, as the DRS actuator pod is the same and the wing's main profile also looks similar. The monkey seat however has been changed in a more traditional winglet, contrary to the curved version that existed ... Read more

Red Bull Racing introduced a new front wing on their car, maintaining the same basic concept but with small modifications all over the wing. Mark Webber left the pitlane with the new wing filled with flowviz in the morning, ready to do some flow verification.

The changes include the addition of two apertures in the end plates to catch a little more air and push it up over the flaps. The stacked element has been modified accordingly, now curving more down close to the endplate. The t... Read more

Lotus is continuing to try out different versions of its exhaust channel, trying to maximize rear downforce. Davide Valsecchi was this morning testing again with an inconel exhaust channel, featuring a different curve and depth. Similar parts were spotted earlier on at the Jerez test.

The team earlier noted that the inconel metallic parts are not being used to resolve overheating issues with the carbon fibre exhaust channel. In fact, the inconel parts are easier and quicker to manuf... Read more

As was expected, Williams F1 have today changed their car by introducing a ramp style exhaust slope, similar to what Lotus F1 and Red Bull Racing are running, not coincidentally two teams that are also powered by a Renault Sport F1 engine. Along with the introduction of the new exhaust the team also re-fitted their high nose. It must be seen whether this is now the preferred choice in combination with the ramp exhaust, or if the team will continue to try out its different nose cones... Read more

McLaren have tested a new front wing (in the lower part of the image) on their MP4-28 to improve car balance and frontal downforce. The team have basically simplified the main place by removing the inner humps that were introduced during the 2012 season. The new front wing is a almost entirely flat, as low as possible to the ground to help create downforce and only bulges towars the endplate to control the downforce generation under steering and yaw.

Along with this, the endings on ... Read more

Lotus was seen running its DRD system yesterday at Barcelona, but interestingly that is not all that changes about the car. In fact, the team changes rear wings along with the fitting of the DRD, and reverts to the previous rear wing when continuing to run without DRD - or passive DRS, or DDRS.

Although the differences between the rear wings are quite marginal, it does show the complexity of the DRD in Formula One. When DRD is fitted, the raer wing endplates do not feature strakes o... Read more

Ferrari have introduced their updates exhaust one day ahead of schedule. Luca Marmorini earlier spoke out of his worries about introducing such a new layout so close to the end of testing, but it appears that Ferrari have managed to speed up the manufacturing process for this particular item. As such, while Felipe Massa was running on Thursday with the same exhaust layout as the car was launched, Fernando Alonso's F138 is now fitted with the update.

The new sidepod bodywork aims to ... Read more