Formula One car development blog

BMW Sauber already had louvers last year in this area, and this time around it's Force India and McLaren that have extended on this concept. At both teams, the car is fitted with an extra cooling opening on both sides of the cockpit. Just like at McLaren, it's an open outlet with the sides covered with shark gills.

The cooling elements' position is strictly defined by the regulations, as anything farther away from the centre of the car is bound to be a continuous shape, hence not al... Read more

Lotus are currently restraining themselves to develop a traditional aero package without taking too much risks. Because the team has quite some catching up to do, copying other solutions is the easiest and quickest way to move forward.

The new Bahrain package includes a new front wing with an additional central element, copied from previous Toyota and BMW Sauber cars. Only in the central 15cm of the rear wing, it is allowed to have more than 2 elements in the rear wing, and so an ad... Read more

After having displayed their 2009 front wing on the presented R30, the team ran a curvy front wing during all winter testing, before introducing this new spec at free practice in Bahrain. While the base profile retains largely the same shape, the cascade element now features a much deeper spoon to catch more air and push it upwards. The item also has extends above the front wing endplate and in fact has its own small endplate attached on the outer edge of the panel.

Also interesting... Read more

While Red Bull have chosen a development approach rather than a complete redesign, the list of optimisations on the car is nearly endless. One of the more interesting items is the location of the brake calipers, constructed by Brembo in Red Bull's case.

On both the front and rear wheels, the calipers are positioned at the bottom end of the brake discs, creating the lowest possible centre of gravity for the wheels. While Honda have come close to this in 2006, most teams have compromi... Read more

As the cars completed all the testing that is allowed, the crew on track and at the factory have been practicing pitstops without refuelling the car. While previously the tyre changers were not the critical path of a pitstop procedure due to the longer refuelling time, they certainly will be now.

Williams have stated a 3.5s stop will be "decent", but rumours from Red Bull claims pitstops of under 3 seconds. To optimise this process, most of the experienced teams have designed specia... Read more

Toyota look to be back where they were early on in the season, close to the front runners. After a mid-season struggle, the team introduced several updates that shaved a few tenths off the car's pace. Currently, Toyota's TF109 is running with a double deck diffuser much alike that of Brawn or McLaren with a downward bend in the centre. Previously the double deck diffuser had a design similar to Williams' initial design, but the Japanese team quickly understood the advantages of the ... Read more

Outboard mirrors are more and more becoming the standard, and Force India is now jumping on the bandwagon by replacing its inboard mirrors - connected to the cockpit sides - with mirrors fixed on top of the sidepod panels.

BMW Sauber is one of the teams to have made the same design change during this season. Renault on the other hand are using conventional inboard mirrors after having introduced this type of mirror positioning on their Renault R27.

Red Bull Racing have brought another aerodynamic step to its car at Singapore, and most notably that includes a new diffuser. The new design has changed mostly in the centre part of the car, around the double decked area. Where the older version focused on speeding up air on the lower channel, the new iteration has a bigger central channel around the crash structure to profit more of the DDD design. The central part is now very similar to the Renault or Brawn diffusers.

One detail m... Read more

Ever since the beginning of the season, actually even during winter testing, BMW Sauber have been running extremely bulky and simple front wing endplates. At first we thought they were just for testing purposes, but the items stayed there far too long, until the Singapore GP.

There, the F1.09 was raced with a far more complex endplate, much resembling the Brawn GP and Force India versions. The combination of two panels with a separate vertical element to support the stacked elements... Read more

Force India is clearly not standing still after their recent successes at Spa and Monza. At Singapore, the team introduced a shark fin, replacing the car's conventional engine cover used throughout the season so far.

The new fin connects to the rear wing, just like at Red Bull, although Force India's version features a large opening ahead of the rear wing to control its unfluence when the car is under yaw. The change immediately appears to have made the stacked centre of the rear wi... Read more