Formula One car development blog

In an attempt to decrease drag all over the car, Ferrari chose to create a special front wing that only has 2 main planes and the additional doubled element. Such a design will decrease the amount of induced drag and is particularly more efficient when the wing is configured to not generate as much downforce as during previous races. From the top teams, Ferrari is the only team to have switched from 3 to 2 planes if you leave out the 2.5 plane wing as seen at BMW Sauber - who on the... Read more

The mid wing that Renault had just introduced at the Spanish Grand Prix has again been removed from the car after only two appearances. With 2 tracks ahead that require high top speeds, the team opted to remove the wing in favour of the reduced drag. The reduction in downforce is not an issue for Canada or the American GP since a medium to low downforce configurations are used for the wings too. The image on the left shows the locations where the wing was previously attached. It is ... Read more

After having introduced their new front wing at the Spanish GP, the team have already come up with an evolution of the end plates. The new endplate in fact very much resembles that as seen on their old front wing, races at the first 3 races of this year. At Spain however, the endplate extended higher at the front, meaning that is also acted as the endplate of the upper front wing panel. At Monaco, the front height was reduced and the upper front wing panel being a part of it, much a... Read more

Back in 2006 when the Honda did not perform as well as expected at the beginning of the season, the team developed special ears located close to the cockpit. The curved panels - upper part of the image - directed more air into the sidepods and removed some turbulence around the cockpit. The panels survived the winter and were on the current RA107 until now. Honda have now added flow conditioner wings, much alike those at Renault. Contrary however to their French colleagues, Honda ad... Read more

As with any other team at Monaco, McLaren have sought for solutions to increase downforce with a minimal drag penalty. They have come up with an extra winglet fixed in between the central rear wing supports. The new item simply doesn't stretch the whole rear wing because of the technical regulations. Due to its small size, it will only add a tiny bit of downforce to the rear end of the car while not adding too much drag. In fact the winglet will cooperate with the rear wing just abo... Read more

Toyota is obviously lacking downforce and overall grip at Monaco, even after several updates. The team introduced a new rear and front wing and have altered their sidepod vanes by adding a winglet on the inside of the panel. The upper part of the image shows the assembly at the time of the Malaysian GP where the vane is built for flow conditioning, similar to BMW, Ferrari and McLaren. The new item in the lower part of the image has a smaller vane and added winglet, similar to what B... Read more

In an urgent challenge to improve the performance of their R27, Renault have followed suit with McLaren and Ferrari to add a mid-wing. The two leading teams have been running these since the beginning of the season, and Renault introduced the item in Spain. It still proves to be useful for a high downforce circuit like Monaco. Contrary to what some may expect, the mid-wing itself is not designed to generate but instead helps to improve airflow onto the rear wing, thereby increasing ... Read more

BMW have quickly improved over the winter to become the third team in F1. Yet it is not enough and improvements are coming quickly to close the gap with the leading teams. At Barcelona the team had a new main plane ready for the front wing. It was strangely not tested before during the Barcelona test but instead Mario Theissen only made an announcement on Thursday that the team would run a new item Friday morning. The new main plane is more edgy in the middle than before and aims to... Read more

In an attempt to regain some pace from last year, Renault introduced several updates for the Spanish Grand Prix. One of these changes are the modified exhaust covers that are now smaller at the base. The arrow denotes the new version that is designed to improve the airflow towards the rear wing. The smaller base size will decrease the air cooling along with the exhaust pipes but lowers the drag.

From all the updates at Barcelona, Honda came up with the weirdest looking of all. Instead of an added plane on the front wing, Honda have not been looking for front downforce. Instead two giant extensions were developed on top of the nose cone. These are positioned and curved so that they improve airflow towards the driver's helmet and further downward onto the rear wing. As this may affect driver visibility or may be dangerous in case of an accident it is still unsure at this time... Read more