2023 marks the 2nd year of Formula 1’s ground effect regulations and a new regime for many teams, taking the learnings from the first year. Racecar Engineering brings you up to date with an in-depth look at some of Formula 1’s top technology stories, insights into classic racers, and the 2026 PU regulations in this new digital magazine. 

Check it out below! 

The Red Bull RB18, which won the 2022 F1 Constructors’ and Drivers’ Championships, was powered to its dominant success by a Red Bull Powertrains (RBPT) RBPTH001. This power unit is a derivative of the Honda RA621H, used by the Japanese manufacturer during the 2021 F1 World Championship campaign. Red Bull Powertrains was created in 2021 to supply power units to Oracle Red Bull Racing and Scuderia AlphaTauri for the 2022 F1 season and beyond after Honda announced it would exit F1 at the end of the 2021 season.

Although Honda’s participation in F1 was officially over, the 2022 Oracle Red Bull Racing and Scuderia AlphaTauri power units were Honda-produced, assembled, maintained, and trackside supported, despite their RBPT designation.  Between 2021 and 2022, there were significant FIA-implemented development restrictions in place for the power unit manufacturers, limiting the spec changes for the 2022 season ahead of an internal combustion engine (ICE), MGU-H, turbocharger, fuel and oil freeze from 1 March 2022, and the MGU-K, energy store and control electronics freeze from 1 September. After these dates, power unit specifications were frozen until the end of the 2025 season, before a new power unit era starts in 2026.

Despite the limited development scope, Honda engineers in Japan were busy making detailed but essential design changes to the RA621H to produce its successor’s specifications. Without Honda’s commitment, Red Bull would have started the new era at a significant disadvantage, as the other manufacturers developed their power units before those freeze dates. Honda developed the 2022 RBPTH001 power unit at its research and development centre in Sakura City, Tochigi prefecture, run by Honda’s racing subsidiary, HRC (Honda Racing Corporation). In charge of the development there is Tetsushi Kakuda, executive chief engineer, automobile racing development division and F1 project leader.

The E10 issue

The most significant development area for the 2022 Formula 1 power unit specification was around the new fuel introduced for 2022, which includes 10 per cent ethanol, up from the previous 5.75 per cent bio-content. There are pros and cons to running any engine on E10. The construction of the ethanol molecule means it carries a lower quantity of joules per kilogram as a combustible vapour compared to the equivalent volume of petrol, making the combustion process less potent. However, engineers can adjust several elements of the engine configuration, as well as running parameters, to exploit some beneficial characteristics of the higher ethanol content. For example, compression ratio, if permissible by regulation, can increase and drive combustion efficiency higher.

Honda tested several E10 formulations proposed by its fuel partner, ExxonMobil, before choosing the one with the most desirable characteristics. ‘Because E10 has very different characteristics from the previous fuel generation, we had to develop the combustion-related elements to work with that,’ Kakuda explains. ‘The calorific value of E10 is lower than the previous fuel, which would reduce engine output if we could not address it. We adjusted the ignition timing for the 2022 engine compared to 2021, and peak cylinder pressure is higher in the 2022 engine.’ There was no change to the pre-chamber ignition systems coinciding with the fuel evolution, though the MGU-H ERS was tuned to the E10 exhaust gas entropy. Honda and ExxonMobil conducted detailed investigations into the fuel and lubricant interaction with combustion chamber geometry. Not all the fuel injected into the combustion chamber burns to generate power, thanks to crevice losses around the pre-chamber ignition, valve seats and piston top land. Formula 1 engines typically have low crevice volumes, but still, roughly two per cent of the injected fuel escapes combustion by residing in them.

The construction of the Formula 1 car is a complex technical and logistical challenge that involves hundreds or, in some cases, thousands of personnel. From the first time pencil touches paper in the design concept meetings held by the chief designers and engineers in the performance groups to the time the car rolls out for the first race of the season, the Formula 1 factory operates flat out 24/7 to design, develop, manufacture and build parts and processes to make the fastest car they can imagine within the confines of the rules.

Click Here to check out the AMR23 Technical Gallery

 

The process of realising the AMR23, the 2023 car from Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant F1 Team, is no different. The highly competitive racer employs an all new design featuring sculpted upper side pods with the down-washing rear body design pioneered by Red Bull on its RB18. Technical Director of Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant F1 Team, Dan Fallows, explained that the AMR23 takes onboard all the learnings from it’s 2022 campaigning AMR22. He noted that the AMR23 was an almost completely new car, designed and developed from scratch for the 2023 season, which meant that the 12,000 plus parts all needed to be created in the 12 months leading up to the car launch.

Watch the video below to see what the Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant F1 Team went through to get its 2023 racer together:

As the 2023 F1 season gets underway, Racecar Engineering presents its performance insights in this, the second year of F1’s new era. So far in 2023, the ten teams have introduced a whirlwind of new designs derived from a whole host of learnings taken from the first season of these new regulations in 2022. Looking at the cars throughout the field, the convergence of thought has somewhat arrived, with many of the cars sporting similar bodywork designs, particularly from the front of the driver’s cell rearwards.

The overarching favoured body shape is one featuring horizontal rectangular or oval side pod openings, heavily sculpted upper side pods with a down-washing upper surface to feed the upper floor, and a dual beam wing adorning the back of the car. Most of the cars were a variation of this, with the exception of Ferrari, Haas and Mercedes. Ferrari’s bodywork features a shallower sidepod sculpting with a wider, more curved outer surface for the air to follow the contour of the inside of the upper sidepod bodywork over a series of cooling louvres before converging inwards towards the back of the car. Mercedes is taking a different route with its vertical rectangular side pod entries on either side of the driver cell, tightly packaged in its so-called zero-pod design, which first arrived in 2022.

Luckily for many of the teams, it seems as though the word porpoising has almost wholly disappeared from Formula 1’s dictionary. The season’s early stages are expected to reveal many innovative car developments, tweaks and evolution. These are sometimes down to teams concealing the race-spec of the car before the first GP or making developments between the car’s launch and the test. The 2023 test saw a small amount of this, but only subtle aero tweaks were noted by Racecar Engineering from the start to the end of the three-day test in Bahrain. This is also to do with the fact that the F1 teams have moved into 2023 with a stable set of rules from the 2022 season.

Additionally, each team has its aerodynamic concept somewhat locked thanks to the limited development rules on CDF and wind tunnel testing and the cost cap. As such, even in only the second year of these regulations, incremental development and tweaking of aero surfaces to optimise the airflow in every way is the name of the game – aka, the diminishing returns function is somewhat underway. However, there can indeed be substantial performance gains in accumulating these small changes, and every team will already have updates scheduled to arrive in the first few GPs.

Regarding overall pace, the cars in Bahrain winter testing this season are already faster than last year’s qualifying lap times at this circuit. That is indicative of the accumulation of an entire year of development, which has focused on car weight for many teams. Many teams started the 2022 season overweight, and ahead of the 2023 season, they are likely approaching the 798kg legal weight limit.

The engineers have also been busy finding lap time with CFD and in the wind tunnel, coordinating where they can shave weight off their car. The design convergence and many of the teams likely bringing the weight of the cars down naturally means the field spread is a bit closer than last year, leading to the performance convergence and tighter racing throughout the field that these technical regulations were designed to provide.

Red Bull Racing

The Red Bull Racing RB18 was the car to beat in the 2022 season, and their performance in pre-season testing shows they may have found even more performance over the winter. The design of the RB18 was the first to feature side pod openings with a lower ‘splitter’ edge that protrudes from the opening, heavily sculpted upper side pods with a down-washing upper surface to feed the upper floor, and a dual beam wing adorning the back of the car – the concept which many teams have adopted for 2023. Red Bull was the strongest car in testing by quite a margin, their race simulations providing a warning for the other teams that things at the top spot may not be about to change.

Ferrari

Ferrari’s SF-23 is a close cousin to the previous year’s SF-75, with the Maranello squad following the route they pioneered at the beginning of this era. As highlighted above, unlike many in the 2023 field, the Ferrari’s bodywork features a shallower sidepod sculpting with a wider, more curved outer surface for the air to follow the contour of the bodywork before converging inwards towards the back of the car. This creates a lower profile car towards the rear which should provide a cleaner airflow to the rear wing and beam wing than some of its colleagues. Simulation data showed Ferrari suffered heavy degradation during testing.

The SF-75 had a very sharp front end with the tendency to overheat tyres on both axles, especially in the second half of the season. 2023 sees a new front tyre construction from Pirelli which could worsen problems, as they’ve added more front-end into the tyre design. This can be balanced out with setup but could present Ferrari with some difficulties. The 2022 car characteristics also shone through in the overall pace of the car as it excels on the straights compared to its rivals but tend to lose out just a little bit through the corners. This indicates Ferrari had a bit less downforce and drag on their car.

Mercedes

Mercedes developed their W14 from the poorly behaved W13, though it retains a variant of its zero-pod sidepod design. The zero-pod concept sees the radiators packaged uncharacteristically close to the central chassis of the car, making the radiator inlets narrow and tall rather than broad and short. Mercedes has remained tight-lipped about the full reasoning for continuing down this route, although it has confidently announced that it has high performance in its DNA.

Racecar Engineering understands this design to stem from front tyre wake control. The way Mercedes has chosen to tackle the front wheel wake is to have removed as much bodywork behind the area inboard of the front tyre that the front wheel wake can get attached to and end up in the rear of the car and hurt aerodynamic performance. Removing the bodywork in this area leaves space for clean air to flow between the front wheel and the chassis and onto the back of the car to aid the rear aerodynamic performance.

During testing, the W14 was just a couple of tenths off the Red Bull RB19’s pace, but setup challenges and reliability issues hampered the squad from making progress on its closest rivals on average pace. Mercedes’ weakness seemed to be their top speed, allegedly caused by being down on engine power and the design philosophy of the rear of the car causing significant drag. This means they are towards the mid to lower end of the whole speed range of the field.

Aston Martin

The AMR23 from Aston Martin employs the signature 2023 sculpted upper side pods with the down-washing rear body design pioneered by Red Bull on its RB18. Its pre-season testing pace was uncharacteristically fast for the team’s recent performances. They were up towards the front end of the midfield daily during testing in performance runs, high fuel runs and race simulations. During the full race simulation, which saw the AMR23‘s tank brimmed, sent out for a race stint, brought in for full-speed pit stops and sent back out, Aston Martin Driver Fernando Alonso appeared to get negative degradation – the Spanish driver’s pace improved with each lap he put on the tyres. It remains to be seen how their performance stacks up in the early season.

Alfa Romeo

Alfa Romeo‘s C43 saw a heavy redesign compared to the 2022 C42. The team’s design philosophy was to allow for significant development within the framework of the C42, which seems to have worked for the Swiss squad. The car’s bodywork is a vast departure from the 2022 machine featuring heavily sculpted upper side pods with the signature 2023 down-washing rear to feed the upper floor towards the back of the car. The team carried out a vast number of small tests within the pre-season testing window. The long-run pace looked solid depending on the tyre compound they used and the track conditions; the car seems competitive, with its pace a step ahead of Haas in the Alpha Tauri.

Haas and Alpha Tauri

Haas and Alpha Tauri‘s performance seemed incredibly close. Both teams adopted a significant redesign of their cars for the 2023 season. Both teams have followed design cues from their partner teams, Ferrari and Red Bull Racing, respectively, and firmly stand in the midfield of this 2023 grid according to testing performance. There was little to choose between the two teams on the more extended race simulations, each in the same ballpark regarding pace and degradation. Haas and Alpha Tauri‘s performance has shown to be promising in early development cycles in the past so it will be a case of them maintaining their relative performance this season by continuing development like their colleagues in the paddock.

Williams

Williams‘ FW45 showed a higher and more consistent pace than last season but averaged out around the back of the midfield during pre-season testing. Its body design again follows much of the 2023 grid’s formula of heavily sculpted upper side pods with the down-washing rear to feed the upper floor towards the back. The single-lap pace and race simulations only consistently bettered a couple of teams.

Alpine and McLaren

The two teams that struggled most with getting mileage under the belts of their 2023 machinery also ended up occupying the last two spots on the time sheets. These two teams were Alpine and McLaren.

Needless to say, testing is essential, and unfortunately for these two teams, a lack of running prevented them from gathering data and also prevented them from uncovering more performance from the 2023 package. McLaren’s MCL60 is a reasonable evolution of the MCL36 and carries over many of the design elements its predecessor was sporting in the latter stages of 2022. However, its high and low fuel load pace was not highly competitive. The cause of this was apparently to do with the car’s aerodynamic inefficiency or drag level, which stems from a correlation problem. Correlation is a hugely complex task, so it is hard for McLaren to know how long it might take to tackle that.

The Alpine A523 is a significant evolution from its predecessor, the A522, which has seen radical development over the winter months, led hand in hand by the design and technical teams at its bases in Enstone, United Kingdom and Viry-Châtillon, France. From the time sheets, it didn’t seem like Alpine did a race simulation, and their testing long-run data could have been more extensive. The lap times were towards the back every day, with some people in the paddock speculating that they were running high fuel load running for the entire test. However, Racecar Engineering understands that if they were running a high fuel load, this effective pace would have seen them carrying around 60 kilograms deficit to match the pace of the Red Bull RB19.

Stay tuned for more analysis as the season unfolds.

On February 10 2023, The Alfa Romeo F1 Team Stake C43 completed a successful first day on track at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, with Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu putting the car through its first miles of the 2023 season.

In front of Technical Director, Jan Monchaux, under whose supervision the C43 was designed and developed, the car underwent the first tests and checks to ensure the functionality of all systems as part of a filming day. The outing was successful, with both drivers having the opportunity to experience the new machinery ahead of the pre-season testing session, scheduled for the end of the month in Bahrain.

Jan Monchaux, Technical Director of Alfa Romeo F1 Team Stake: “The debut of our C43 is a pivotal moment in our season: it marks the start of our on-track campaign and really drives home how close the season is. Today was important to ensure everything is in place, not just with the car but also with the wider team, ahead of what is going to be a crucial start of the championship. We have to thank everyone who worked on the car, and of course also our partners Ferrari, for getting us here. We are ready for testing and we can’t wait to get to work in Bahrain.”

Alessandro Alunni Bravi, Managing Director of Sauber Group and Alfa Romeo F1 Team Stake Representative: “It’s a great moment to witness the first on-track outing of the C43, on an important TV day in which we created plenty of material for our partners and their activations. This is the final moment of a long process during which our car was thought, designed, created and assembled, and we take pride in the journey we have completed: it was made possible by the commitment, dedication and passion of everyone working in our HQ in Hinwil, and of our technical partners, first and foremost Ferrari. We know the challenges that lie ahead, but we are confident that, with this same attitude, this same hard work, we will be successful and make another step forward.”

On 9 January 2023, Draveil, France-born Frédéric Vasseur, started the role of Scuderia Ferrari General Manager and Team Principal. Vasseur’s motorsport career has been vast, beginning in 1992 while still studying Aeronautical Engineering at ESTACA (École Supérieure des Techniques Aéronautiques et de Construction Automobile) in Paris, preparing Formula 3 engines for Renault with his company, RPM. After graduating in 1995, he set up the ASM team, racing in Formula 3 in 1996 and ran the operation up to 2015, winning various titles, including the French one in 1998 with David Saelens at the wheel. He won the European title four times between 2004 and 2007, with Jamie Green, Lewis Hamilton, Paul Di Resta and Romain Grosjean.

In 2004, he created a second team, ART Grand Prix winning eighth teams’ championships across GP2 and GP3 and eleven drivers’ titles, including clinching the 2016 GP3 crown with Charles Leclerc. An inquiring mind and a willingness to explore new avenues led Vasseur to set up AOTech in 2010, a company specialising in driving simulators and CFD design. Two years later, along came Spark Racing Technology, designing and manufacturing hybrid and electrical systems. The company secured the contract to supply Formula E chassis when the category for fully electric single-seaters was first set up by the FIA (Federation Internationale Automobile) in 2014. Frédéric first appeared in the Formula 1 paddock in 2016 as Renault Team Principal. The following year, he became Managing Director of the Sauber Group and Team Principal of the Alfa Romeo Sauber F1 Team, which morphed into Alfa Romeo Racing in 2019, running Ferrari power units.

Vasseur explains the challenges of Formula 1 and what it takes to be competitive in the current era.

Q: How has working in F1 evolved over the last seven years, whether in management, engineering, or another role in the sport?

‘The weight of teamwork is much more important than the weight of individuals nowadays, much more so than it was just a few years ago. It is more a matter of team achievement because the large size of the teams requires more coordination within the departments. A single person’s influence is less, but that isn’t to say they are less critical because they are now more specialised than ever. Formula 1 is evolving in a way that responds better to specialists than individuals with an overview of a particular subject. However, with that, there has been the requirement to more effectively coordinate those specialists who previously would be able to do much more than they do now. This dramatically changes the structure of the teams and the output from that in terms of the rate of development. Another influence is that teams have a new generation coming into Formula 1, and this talent has an entirely new point of view. They respect different technologies and physics in various ways to the previous generation. It is therefore essential to have management with a lot of experience to do this coordination as effectively as possible without letting too many points of view interfere with each other.’

Q: What are your thoughts on the latest era of technical regulations?

‘The regulations are good if teams are in front! Jokes aside, they have changed dramatically over recent years with the cost cap regulations, technical regulations, sporting regulations for using wind tunnels, etc. All of these are going in the direction of the convergence of performance. Even the fact the engines are frozen means F1 is going toward a tighter championship fight, and it is working. Teams were spread out about five per cent in qualifying performance in 2017 and 2018, and now most teams are within two per cent. In 2022, five teams were within a one per cent performance margin between them. It will be a fantastic sport if F1 maintains these regulations for a while.’

Q: What’s F1’s best tool for development?

‘Simulations and simulators are our best tools. The rate of development is extreme with these. In the early stages of implementing simulators, teams made so much progress and now confidently use simulation technology to influence what takes place during the race weekend. The simulation and trackside departments need coordination and trust during the race weekend. The team at the factory will run simulations for set-up throughout the night after taking trackside data in from the car on Friday. They will then arrive at a set-up they believe is most performing before the team on the ground reaches the track on Saturday morning. If teams are confident with correlation, they know the decision made back at the factory can be performant if implemented on the car. The four pillars of performance are the wind tunnel, CFD, simulator and the actual car. Each needs to be working effectively to be performant. No one of those operations is considered less vital than the others; they are all critical.’

Q: How do you balance between what software suggests the next development step should be vs the trackside engineers’ philosophy?

‘Teams ask this question each day! This group’s task is to predict how best to use the tools they have to finish as high as possible. Before an event, teams do many simulations that scan all the set-up variations, including the wings, ride height, suspension etc. But then you have the event itself, which offers a multitude of variables that are very difficult to predict, let alone use in your favour. So, teams must constantly balance theory and practice. Nowadays, the theory is very close to reality, much more so than it was just a few years ago. So, it is safe to say teams lean on it more, but to say it provides all the answers is far from the truth. The margins across the field are also extremely tight, so if your delta from your target is out by just a tiny per cent, your position could be from the front to the back of the field. A small percentage between your simulation and reality could make a huge difference.’

Q: How vital are drivers in developing these cars with all the technology available in Formula 1 now?

‘The contribution is mega. The first part of their contribution is at the track, keeping consistent and pushing the car to its limit, as well as the race craft regarding wheel-to-wheel battles and making progress in every stint. The second part is to understand the physics at play and to work with the engineers to exploit the car’s potential under development. The third element is personal, which is maintaining their desire to keep pushing themselves and motivating the team to keep pushing and exploiting all the hard work that goes into producing the car and running the car at the track. This is not trivial.’

Q: What’s your approach to strategy?

‘Strategy is a critical part of Formula 1. However, it is made complex by specific allocations such as tyres, the timing of sessions throughout the race weekend, and developing and bringing new parts to the circuits where they’re going to be most performant. The closer you are to peak performance, the more dramatic the effect of any single mistake in the operations or strategy. You must be sure you’re doing the right thing at the right time to exploit the opportunities you have to collect data and make progress. Strategy during the race is entirely different. It hinges on what’s about to happen next and how to make the most of that. Teams are constantly looking at the next lap and simultaneously checking what their rivals are doing to see if they must manipulate what they’re going to do next because of what the rivals are doing. It also knows whether there are points in some races where your competitors might make mistakes. Typically, this will be around when tyre degradation is high, or some drivers are fighting for position. In moments like this, it can change your entire race. If there is a safety car, for example, you can make giant jumps in the field or make good progress on a new set of tyres when others are not putting in the best lap times.’

Q: How could artificial intelligence be used to influence Formula 1 strategy?

‘The database for the use of artificial intelligence for doing the complete strategy of the race has yet to arrive, but teams are well on the way to being able to do something like this soon. You could imagine that the software could eventually have the information to take into consideration the track, conditions, the number of pit stops, the relative position between drivers and when there is a chance for an incident to give you the probability of a safety-car on the upcoming lap, or something like this. But it will take a very long time to collect this kind of information at the size teams need to make the right calls from the output. In my previous life, I worked on a project that studied road accidents for trucks. The database for this was mega, with millions of trucks worldwide. These databases considered the hours the trucks had been running on that shift, whether it was AM or PM, summer or winter, and many more factors. It also considered the number of high braking events over the previous two hours and whether there were any incidents of over speed on some sections of the road. In the end, the software could consider all these elements and identify the risk of an accident. This took many millions of data points in a very consistent framework. In Formula 1, teams already take in billions of data points annually, but teams want to keep this private because it is a competitive advantage. Additionally, you cannot manoeuvre straightforwardly using data because the margins are tiny. Teams would have to consider a sub-one per cent margin of error, and the variables are still considerable. Due to the specificity of our business, I think Formula 1 will use this later.’

‘It’s easy to say we had a tough time when we went through the eight previous Formula 1 world championships, winning them all, and we’re no longer in that position,’ says Mike Elliott, technical director of Mercedes AMG Formula 1, on the team’s 2022 performance. ‘We’re bound to think it’s not brilliant. However, looking at a wider context, the 2022 regulations intended to mix up the field and improve the show. In that way, Formula 1 achieved those outcomes.’

Mercedes’ change of fortune since the introduction of the hybrid era has been well documented. Its 2022 car, the AMG F1 W13 E Performance (the 13 referring to it being the 13th car produced by the Mercedes-AMG works team since re-entering F1 in 2010), was the product of a top to bottom re-design in line with new Formula 1 regulations. The only carry-over element from its predecessor was the steering wheel.

Blank slate

Operating from a blank slate, with a steep development curve, the team’s Brackley and Brixworth engineering squads had to push much harder than the previous generation of Formula 1, where they stole a march on the competition and carried it through to the end of the era. Unlike the prior generation of dominant Mercedes machinery, the W13 had a bumpy coming of age.

For context, the 2022 rules reduced the cars’ wake (turbulence caused by the car passing through the air) as a function of the new aerodynamic regime, allowing competitors to get closer to one another, particularly in the corners. The challenge of overtaking in the previous generation of Formula 1 was primarily down to this wake. However, the lower wake means the corner gains are somewhat outweighed by the toe effect (slipstreaming) reduction on the straights.

Net, Elliott said the cars’ resulting closeness and overall competitiveness over an individual lap have not changed much. ‘In terms of closing up the grid, it’s probably the same split as we’ve had before,’ he notes. ‘I guess we are the only ones that have seriously changed position in the rankings, and that’s our problem to deal with. We ended up with a poorly behaving car and an uncomfortable ride for the drivers, thanks to the direction we took with the new aerodynamic establishment.’

Bad behaviour

Thanks to the introduction of ground-effect aerodynamics, the 2022 rules rewarded running the car as close to the ground as possible. However, if platform control isn’t sufficient, this low running can induce instability in underfloor flow fields and lead to so-called porpoising and bouncing. Mercedes suffered badly from flow field instability in various ways throughout the 2022 season, but was not alone in this battle.

‘I don’t think any teams effectively spotted porpoising over the winter period between 2021 and 2022,’ says Elliott. ‘We did anticipate having to run the car very low under these full ground-effect regulations. However, the challenges of ground-effect aerodynamics are stronger on some cars than others. They are unique to the flow field structure under the car, its set-up scope and performance window.’

Cars have three modes in their suspension: roll, pitch and heave, which operate at different frequencies. In a porpoising scenario, the car ends up with a phase shift between its front and rear aerodynamics, which feeds into the pitch mode. With these cars, teams see predominantly heave, and some pitch, depending on speed and the characteristics of the circuit.

‘It became apparent early in 2022, even without significant aerodynamic work, that these cars wanted to run very low to the ground,’ said Elliott. ‘So we focussed on designing the floor to survive in those conditions, and at the ride height that would be most performant,’ says Elliott. ‘We underestimated one problem and didn’t spot another, which is why we had the behavioural issues we did. One thing we can put our finger on is that it was a consequence of the aerodynamic changes in the regulations.’

On the bounce

Mercedes claimed to make good progress ironing out its issues regarding underfloor flow field instability that led to the porpoising phenomenon in the season’s early stages. However, the W13 still suffered from ‘bouncing’ – a heave motion response caused by the underfloor aerodynamic instability.

‘Bouncing issues are complex,’ highlights Elliott. ‘The aerodynamics put energy in the vertical motion of the car due to a phase shift between the aerodynamic load and the car’s ride height position that gives you a net energy input more than the dampers can deal with. The fact we have to run these cars so low to the ground, with so much downforce on them to be performant, means they must run really stiff, and that’s a huge contributor to these significant consequences.’

As well as the changes to the aerodynamic regulations, the new-for-2022 18in wheel and tyre package has changed how teams approach car performance. ‘There are significant amounts of lap time to be found by improving the car’s dynamic behaviour, and engineers can find some of this in setting up the car to get the tyres into their performance window,’ notes Elliott. ‘The new tyres want slightly different things to get them into the window that works when compared to the previous 13in ones. Though this wasn’t the route to solve our challenges with car behaviour.

‘You have to put it in perspective. The tyre is not particularly stiff, and then you’ve got stiff suspension springs and, in parallel with the suspension springs, you have the stiff dampers. In reality, these cars are inflexible, so it’s hard to dampen the motions and take a lot of energy out of the car’s movement.’

Chassis

The chassis regulations also changed for 2022 and included a more challenging side squeeze test, requiring higher strength than the previous generation of cars. The aerodynamic regime has also driven teams to stiffen their cars in areas they otherwise wouldn’t have in the last regulation set.

The position of the homologated side impact structure is defined in the regulations, but early in the design phase for the W13, Mercedes spotted an opportunity to design a wing around the upper side impact structure to add a downwashing flow to the car in that region.

‘We spent a lot of the winter figuring out how best to work this loophole, and wondering if there was any part of the wording that would see the other teams trying to get it stopped,’ says Elliott of the wings that sit either side of the driver’s cell. ‘We went for it at a certain point in the development, and it performs well and suits our overall aero regime for the car.’ Others are yet to follow suit, instead using the space Mercedes carved away for this structure to house components.

Many teams throughout the 2022 grid did not push to meet the minimum 798kg weight, instead choosing to focus on more performant opportunities that were perceived as more rewarding than just having the lightest car possible by regulation.

‘We were overweight at the beginning of the season, though we did a lot of work to bring it down towards the minimum,’ explains Elliot. ‘However, weight is an interesting equation in this era of Formula 1. Although it’s one of the key performance drivers, it is also limited by regulations. Because of that, car development differs from what one might think. We are always targeting a lower lap time, and reducing the weight to the minimum amount gains a certain amount of lap time performance, but a heavier car with a more sophisticated aerodynamic package generates even more performance on the track.

‘Because we have so many tools to develop a more performant car, lowering the weight to the minimum isn’t as dramatic a driver as it once was in Formula 1. Additionally, we’ll take a weight penalty for a more reliable car, as a DNF or grid penalty from replacing components that have failed, or run over the maximum unit allocation for the season, carries a high burden in the championship standings.’

Packaging

Mercedes’ aerodynamic philosophies dictated the direction they went in terms of the weight of each component that affects aerodynamic performance. Once a philosophy is settled on, much of the design concept comes from that, and forces a particular route to effectively deploy it. Mercedes went with a very narrow packaging concept, while much of the rest of the grid chose a wider body to suit their philosophies. Elliott doesn’t think there was a big difference in the potential of any of the 2022 philosophies because the detail is where it counts, much of which is under the floor.

‘When you look at a formula 1 car as an aerodynamicist, you immediately see that the dominant features are the front wheels. These generate a tremendous amount of wake, and how you deal with that is the key to performance. In the past, we would counter the effect of front tyre wake by implementing complex structures behind the wheels in the form of bargeboards and other wake control devices. But in 2022, we couldn’t do that. So, our philosophy for the W13 was to bring the bodywork in the central chassis of the car as tight as possible to the driver cell and the power unit to have a minimal effect from the front tyre wake.’

The W13’s aggressive sidepod packaging was partly thanks to the compact design of the car’s M13 power unit, which features volume dense systems such as water-to-air intercooling. On its creation, Elliott says the team had built up a lot of power unit systems modelling capability over the last few years, enabling them to do a superior job at predicting where the heat capacity and flow rates needed to be in order to be as efficient as possible.

‘We did a lot of work to optimise airflow through the car and work out the pressure losses around radiators,’ he says. ‘Charge air cooling is based on water-to-air heat exchange because we see a massive benefit in that in terms of the entire design philosophy of the car. Its role cannot be underestimated.’

The underfloor aerodynamic regime only slightly changes the packaging of the cars. However, Elliott notes that, in every era, Formula 1 teams always try to push the limits when it comes to packaging. ‘One significant change for us was the limited wheelbase regulations this season. We had the longest car in the previous regime, giving us some freedom where we wanted it. We certainly had a lot more packaging work to do in 2022.

‘The cost cap also drives this because you don’t want to reinvent every bit of the car every year. So, much of our thinking going into 2022 was about how we could develop a car where much of the architecture and critical systems could carry over from year to year. That drove more work on packaging than the aerodynamic regime.’

2023 and beyond

‘We’ve come out the end of the 2022 season with a huge amount of humility,’ says Elliott of the learning journey into this new era to date. ‘We have looked at all the other car solutions on the grid, investigated how other teams have arrived at their solutions and wondered if any of them are better than ours. It’ll be interesting to see how the 2023 cars turn out with all the lessons of the first season of this regulation set behind us.

‘The most significant thing we learnt in 2022 is how to go about adapting to a new rule regime, and figuring out how best to find a performant compromise in adverse circumstances. We’ve learnt how to find the right operations approach to finding performance in a very different type of Formula 1. Without giving too much away about what we did wrong in the first place, we’ve learnt and adapted to this new F1.’

In late summer 2022, the World Motor Sport Council confirmed there would be alterations to the 2023 technical regulations, citing driver safety as the main reason for the adjustments. These changes included raising the floor edges by 15mm and raising the diffuser throat height. The diffuser edge’s stiffness would also increase, and a mandated sensor to monitor porpoising more effectively.

As to how the rule changes for 2023 affect Mercedes’ performance, Elliott says, ‘The raised floor edges are probably the main thing that will affect the car aerodynamically, and this will influence performance. I think it will keep the floor edges off the ground in the high-speed sections, and I think that, generally, it will be helpful for most teams running the car really low.

‘On the flip side, to recover the lost performance from that, we have to see which way that drives us, whether to run the car lower or see a re-design. Running the car lower could end up back with the same problem, but we will investigate that. 15mm is not a huge move. We’re still going to have ground-effect cars, and they’re still prone to underfloor flow field instability. If you’re not careful with how you deal with that aerodynamically, you’ll still have the same problems.’

The 2023 car, Elliott admits, will see a different design to the W13, succeeding Mercedes’ investigations into the aerodynamic concepts of the other teams on the grid. ‘Normally, in a set of rule changes, as the rules get fixed – and they’re fixed for longer and longer – the teams tend to converge. I think the intention of the new rules and the cost cap was to try and constrain the grid, though the front three teams are as far ahead as they have ever been. Whether that will change in time, we will have to wait and see.

‘If you look at Ferrari, Red Bull and Mercedes, the three quickest teams, they look very different. The logical thing is to copy the quickest one, which, unfortunately, is Red Bull. But you can’t just photocopy a car and suddenly jump to the front. It doesn’t work like that. It’s more about trying to understand what people are thinking and their approach, which will converge a bit and maybe the teams will move together, but I don’t think it’ll be 2023 we see parity. I think it will take a few years.’

In an interview with The 10 Group, Oracle Red Bull Racing’s two most senior figures reflected on the origins of their professional relationship, how working together for a common goal formed a bond, and how successes – plus the lean times in between – have shaped the team into a modern-day F1 powerhouse.

Christian Horner is the only Team Principal Oracle Red Bull Racing (ORBR) has ever had, playing an instrumental role in taking what he describes as a ‘party team’ to the lofty heights of winning 2022’s F1 Driver and Constructor Championship.

It’s been a long journey full of twists and turns since the team first competed in the world championship back in 2005 when a relatively green Horner was trying to turn an unproven team into serious competitors. Reflecting back on the period, Horner says it was clear to him what was needed, or more specifically who he needed: Adrian Newey.