Tech: McLaren's major upgrade package

McLaren's long-awaited upgrade package for the Austrian Grand Prix hit the track during Friday practice, with some very obvious aerodynamic modifications.

This package includes a new front wing, front brake ducts, turning vanes and floor.

McLaren has moved away from its usual very large front wing to a more shapely design with smaller cascade winglets. This is likely to aid airflow to the back of the car as much as improving downforce at the front.

Typically McLaren uses the maximum allowable height and plan area for its wings. But while these create lots of downforce, they are inefficient in comparison to more conventional designs.

The old format robs airflow back down the car and does not produce the influential Y250 wake as other designs do. This has led to McLaren's move towards the more common concept.

The front wing flaps are much slimmer at their inboard ends. There is a rounded section where the wings meet the FIA-mandated neutral centre area. This helps to generate a strong vortex that separates the front-tyre wake from the chassis and subsequently keeps this wake from being sucked into between the rear wheels.

Also shaping the flow around the front tyres are new cascades winglets. These are a two-part solution, with slimmer winglets allied to an R-shaped vane.

New vanes on the front brake ducts extend inwards to pick up the wake off the front wing and steer it around to the back of the front tyres.

Aiding the Y250 vortex are new turning vanes beneath the front suspension, again a contemporary design, with three vanes and flat plate running along their bottoms.

At the rear, the suspension blockers are retained, but the floor around the diffuser is subtly altered. The floor ahead of the rear tyres has been opened up with new slots to offset the wake coming off the rear tyres, to reduce disruption to the diffuser.

Also, there is a taller squarer corner to the diffuser, creating more volume inside it. There are also Red Bull-style vortex generators mounted below the floor in the middle of the diffuser.

Clearly this is a wholesale redesign of the car's airflow structures. It must have taken considerable development effort to bring this package to the race, both in terms of windtunnel time and manufacturing resources.

Ferrari

Ferrari split its set-ups between its two cars during Friday practice, with a mixture of old and new approaches.

Kimi Raikkonen went with a higher-downforce set-up, with the drag penalty that comes with it being partially offset with smaller cooling ducts.

On Fernando Alonso's car, there was the opposite approach with a smaller rear wing but more devices to reduce drag such as the blown front axles (not seen since Bahrain in April), a shallower rear wing, simpler rear brake ducts and a different front wing endplate.

Both cars ran the slimmed sidepod set-up introduced in Canada. The relatively cooler weather of Austria is better suited to the tighter bodywork.

Additionally, Raikkonen ran the new titanium skid blocks at the FIA's request.

These aren't a performance or a safety component, merely there to create showers of sparks along the straight and over bumps. Nico Rosberg also ran these parts on his Mercedes. They are part of a package of new technical rules proposed for 2015.

Red Bull

As has often been the case, there were no obviously new parts at Red Bull.

The car outwardly appears to run a variation of the Canada specification, with the new rear wing endplate and the front wing with small flicks mounted inside the endplates.

Additionally, the larger monkey seat from Monaco was reintroduced to cope with the steeper rear wing angles used for this track.

Parts arriving late on Thursday and the first runs on Friday with flow-vis paint applied to the front wing and diffuser suggest that the car has had some detail geometry changes, which required validating through the aero paint test.

Toro Rosso

As part of a slow release of upgrade parts, Toro Rosso has brought several new items to the Red Bull Ring. Again, this is led by a new front wing with wide cascade winglets and two separate flaps on the wing, rather than a large flap with a slot only across part of its span.

Above the new wing are new cascade winglets. These follow the wide winglet design, with an r-shaped vane in the middle of their span.

Additionally, the turning vanes under the front suspension have been updated to three elements with a flat section at their base.

Force India

Updates originally expected to be introduced for Britain appeared earlier than expected in Austria. A revised nose, turning vanes and sidepod cooling outlets all ran on the car during practice.

The new nose is actually a revised version of its existing crash structure. The pylons that mount the front wing to the nose have been extended forwards and the leading edge of the upper nose has been shortened. Not being structural parts, these changes should not have required a new crash test.

These new pillars keep the front wing in the same relative position, but now mount the wing with a longer part of the pillar, rather than meeting the front wing with a small overlap at its trailing edge.

This move is counter to what all other teams are doing. Perhaps this, in addition to the new turning vanes under the nose, are to alter the Y250 airflow, making it turn outwards around the sidepods earlier than with the old wing mounting design.

This is perhaps partly borne out of the alterations to the sidepods, which may well the precursor to those other changes.

Just as with Ferrari in Canada, Force India has slimmed its sidepods, removing the larger central cooling outlet and instead creating outlet ducts along the flanks of the coke bottle shape, which extend through the rear suspension to exit well above the diffuser.

This seems to be the current trend, as it mixes good cooling outlet area, critical for these hot running engines, and keeps the hot air away from upsetting the cars other aerodynamic surfaces.