Sporting rule: how will 2024 championship results impact next year's development?
Following the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, F1 teams will still feel the effect of last year's championship results until the end of June. F1Technical's senior writer Balazs Szabo analyses how the gentle handicapping system works.
Although Red Bull were adamant to secure the constructors’ title last year, the struggles with its car and Sergio Perez’s dip in performance meant that the Milton Keynes-based outfit slipped down to third place in the Constructors’ Championship, with both McLaren and Ferrari managing to leapfrog the Austro-British squad.
Last year’s results in the teams’ standing will have significant consequences in the first half of the year which can affect the development of the 2025 F1 cars, but also the design phase of the all-new 2026 F1 machines which will feature a heavily-revamped aerodynamic platform and power unit.
While developing their cars, teams are restricted by the Aerodynamic Testing Regulations which are usually referred to as ATR.
This was introduced in 2021 and restricts aerodynamic testing using a sliding scale based on constructors’ championship position. The restrictions were introduced in order to bring the competition closer.
In fact, the Aerodynamic Testing Regulations are a gentle form of handicapping, the idea being that the less competitive a team is, the more aerodynamic testing it can do in order to improve.
The year is divided into six ATR periods, three in each half of the calendar, with a baseline allowance of 320 windtunnel runs and 2000 CFD items in each one. However, only one team - whichever is seventh in the championship - has that exact allowance as it increases or decreases in five per cent steps for each constructors’ position.
Every six months, this is reset as per the framework set out in appendix seven of the F1 sporting regulations.
For the upcoming season, Red Bull will have more windtunnel runs and CFD items as it dropped back to third in the teams' standings. By contrast, McLaren will have the least amount of aerodynamic testing time.
The diagram of f1grandslam shows the test hours and items for the first half of 2025. McLaren will have only 70 percent of the baseline allowance, while Sauber will have 115 per cent. Having finished seventh in the teams' standings last year, Haas will have the baseline allowance - 6000 CFD items and 1200 windtunnel runs.
Reflecting on the situation, Red Bull team boss Christian Horner admitted that while the team wasn’t happy about losing the Constructors’ title, the Milton Keynes-based outfit is looking forward to enjoy more ATR time in the first half of 2025.
“It’s a tough one, because we have the biggest regulation change in probably 50 or 60 years in the history of the sport.
“We hate finishing third in the championship, but the additional wind tunnel time that comes with that is the only upside in a year where there is such a dramatic regulatory change [in 2026].
“It’s a constant balancing act and if you are in the title battle, inevitably your development gets dragged into the season longer," Horner concluded.
McLaren have won their first Constructors' title since 1998 thanks to their eye-catching improvement in their management and engineering department in recent season. However, their success also means that the Woking-based outfit will have significantly less time to develop their cars in the wind tunnel.
Reflecting on the challenging, McLaren team boss Andrea Stella said: “You would always take P1 in the championship and then see how you can improve your efficiency in terms of aerodynamic development in the combination of CFD and wind tunnel time.
“Chasing efficiency is not only thanks to the wind tunnel, but is in the whole approach to aerodynamic development. We have experienced ourself that even if you have more and more restrictions, from a development point of view, the way you generate the knowledge, the efficiency, is by far the most important thing.
“It’s not like because I have three times the wind tunnel time, I will necessarily develop the car three times faster. So it’s not necessarily about quantity, we are very much investing in quality of development.”
