Piola's picks: Red Bull's urgent upgrade and teams' DRS tricks

In the first round of the season, the expected competitive order of this year's Formula 1 season was somewhat shuffled up: Mercedes blitzed to a one-two finish, Ferrari endured a nightmarish weekend and Red Bull kicked off its new relationship with Honda with a podium.

After setting modest times in testing, Red Bull threw a raft of new parts at its RB15 challenger in Australia to wade into the title fight - accelerating its development by bringing forward an update that had been earmarked for round three in China.

One element had already made an on-track appearance, figuring briefly in pre-season testing at Barcelona.

This was an updated bargeboard assembly, where one of the sidepod turning vanes was reprofiled to draw a little more control over the wake shed by the front wheels, as shown in Giorgio Piola's illustration.

Although Pierre Gasly's shunt in testing truncated the amount of running the team had with it, Red Bull returned to Melbourne with the same design, breaking the front vane into two distinct pieces.

The piece furthest forward is almost pentagonal in shape, featuring a point at the top that induces a tip vortex.

This is carried around the undercut of the sidepods, while the slots underneath take the turbulent airflow kicked up from the rotation of the wheel and attempt to condition it, before sending it to the components behind to be shaped into a more useable format.

Attached to the horizontal 'manta ray' winglet, the second vane has been extended downwards to direct the tip vortex from the bottom element around the sidepods. It also provides further chances to take the tyre wake from the front and stitch it together into something less detrimental to the aerodynamic balance.

Red Bull created a more heavily cambered wing compared to the majority of the grid

This can then pair up with the unchanged final strake, which curls up at the bottom to allow the airflow to slide down, develop a vortex along the bottom edge and roll up to follow the bottom edge of the sidepods. With this, it's able to boost the higher pressure region above the floor to work the diffuser harder.

Red Bull also emerged with a reworked front wing endplate, pictured by Giorgio Piola, as it looks to draw a little more performance out of its current philosophy.

Contrary to the design used by sister team Toro Rosso, Red Bull used as much of the new bounding box set by the new regulations to create a wing more heavily cambered compared to the majority of the grid.

In doing so, the team has elected to use the outboard area of the front wing to build up a greater amount of downforce, compromising a little on the amount of outwashed air it develops.

Ahead of Australia, Red Bull added a small cutout in the trailing edge of the endplate, allowing for a stronger passage of airflow to be pushed outside of the front wheels.

The vortex shed from the top develops sooner, and the air flowing over from the cutout helps to coax it around the tyre with a little more energy.

Although it's still early on in the new aerodynamic formula, there seemed to be an improvement in the cars' ability to race more closely, despite the limitations of the Albert Park circuit.

Both Red Bulls were in the thick of the action; Max Verstappen caught and passed Sebastian Vettel to clinch third place, while Gasly was nailed to Daniil Kvyat's gearbox following the pitstop phase - albeit unable to launch an attack on the Russian driver, who proved resolute in defence.

How to exploit a DRS actuator

There's been a lot less attention paid to the new rear wing formula in 2019 than the front wing changes.

The rear wings are now taller and wider to create something of a compromise between the previous two sets of aerodynamic regulations. Naturally, the extended top rear wing flap opening is now much larger as a result, and opens by an extra 20mm.

The net result is that DRS is more powerful, not that the Melbourne weekend provided a notable shift in the effect.

Regardless, the teams are trying everything they can to draw as much power from the DRS as possible. After all, slashing the drag produced by a couple of Newtons could be the crucial difference between a failed and successful overtake.

Mercedes opted for a more novel solution. The actuator's opening at the rear edge is serrated - much like the mouth of a sea creature

Hence it makes sense for the teams to shape the DRS actuator housings to minimise the amount of drag produced. In a conventional set-up, the actuator is attached to a hinge that, when activated, is drawn inwards and opens up the rear wing flap.

When deactivated, the wing has to close up in fractions of a second to ensure the airflow reattaches as soon as possible under braking. If the DRS housing is aerodynamically inefficient, it may delay that process.

Ferrari and Mercedes emerged in Australia with two very different designs to extract the most out of the overtaking aid.

Ferrari's housing features an extended snorkel section at the top half, in addition to the hinge mounted further down.

This snorkel acts as the point of rotation for the top element, assisting with some extra support to reduce any wing flex, as well as tidying up the airflow shed off the housing as it passes down the V-shaped cutout - which snips off a little rear-end drag.

Mercedes opted for a more novel solution. The mounting pillar is angled forward to minimise the disruption to the wing behind, while the actuator's opening at the rear edge is serrated - much like the mouth of a sea creature.

This is done to weaken the amount of vortex shedding off the housing, which can develop unwanted pressure distributions over the top surface of the wing when closed, and can disrupt the air flowing through the opening as the DRS is activated.

As the teams now have a full race under their collective belts, there's much more data to build from in shaping later upgrade packages - and a greater pool of ideas for others to become inspired by for their own developments.