The new trend in F1 is reduce the amount of air deflected by the front wing end plate, and leave that job to cleverly designed multiple outboard wing elements and wing strakes.
The new method is to use only the rear most vertical gurney on the end plate aided by the multiple outboard elements on the front wing and the strakes on the lower surface of the wing. As you can see the end-plates are moved further out-board. This is reminisent of the "incorrectly designed" front wing of the MP4-23. Reducing the end-plate to one single vertical fence is done to make space for the more complex main wing elements.
I think the new methods focuses on cleverly creating a very smooth virtual leading edge using the high pressure air in-front of the tyres.The air directly hitting this blunt high pressure zone is smoothly guided around by the strakes and the multiple elements in effect reducing the amount of dirty air around the tyre.
This obviously only works if your wing elements and strakes have the proper shape.
I find simplifying a bit of a wrong word. Yes, for our eyes it looks a lot simpler, but with the air now working on the wing itself, going through slots, strakes, gurneys and what not I dont think it is really simpler.
What we see is an "optimum" every team runs pretty much a similar design, with the single end plate, multiple slots in the outer edge, 2 fixed main planes with a higher cambered inner section and a single adjustable flap. There are a few slight alterations in this, and that is mainly the end plate. For example LRGP runs a remote end plate with a single slot in it and a weird outward turn. McLaren has recently updated it's front wing but still it's end plate is a remote piece with a single slot, somewhat similar to LRGP.
Also Sauber runs a different end plate solution as well as their wing not being to the maximum length. And also Marussia runs a different end plate, although they have ran the more common solution last year.
Mercedes is a weird one, LRGP had a similar end plate solution for a long time but switched to a single piece. Merc seems to be the only one to still actively use the end plate as a device to turn the air outside. Their footplate is a bit bigger too compared to other teams, as well as their inside edge of the wing being different. It seems they however rely on the R-shaped winglet to send the vortex otherwise shed by the flap downstream. Their cascade is a lot different too, which seems more of a device to also turn air outside than create downforce in it's own right.
But with the teams more or less going to similar solution it seems as if the teams are getting close to the optimum in the current rule set. It will be interresting how things go next year.
