F1 2019 tech: Winners, losers and what comes next

Formula 1 isn't a sport, it's a war. Every year, teams bankroll extensive research and development projects to prove their mettle in the annual arms race; hundreds of thousands of dollars are sunk into each aerodynamic appendage, piston ring or splash of fuel to find an advantage worth fractions of a second.

With 2019's slight rehash of the regulations, the focus shifted - and teams had to very quickly get on top of extracting every last drop of performance from the bargeboards. Now, terms such as "boomerangs" and "serrations" have entered the F1 lexicon, having previously been restricted to throwing objects and bread knives respectively.

Although the summer break - and mandatory shutdown - enforced a two-week truce between F1's fiercest competitors, that has now come to an end as the Belgian Grand Prix looms on the calendar.

Let's recap on how each team has approached the 2019 F1 technical tussle, work out what they should all be bringing next, and whether any further household items will lend their names to the latest innovations.

Mercedes - A jigsaw falling into place

Today's W10 is completely unrecognisable to the configuration in which the car emerged for the first week of testing at Barcelona. It experienced a significant 'glow-up' between the two weeks of initial running, everything from front to back - externally, at least - was changed.

With that second package forming the basis of future evolution, Mercedes has continued the aggressive upgrade path. Every single part is up for review, and even recent developments are continuously reassessed and improved; the front wing, for example, has been incrementally updated to get the most out of the rest of the aero package. From a purely technological standpoint, the team continues to excel.

The engine cover and surrounding bodywork also benefits from a high level of customisability, and the panels can be changed according to the cooling requirements of each circuit. Only once, in Austria, has that not been quite enough; the surprisingly hot conditions threw Mercedes a curveball, which meant the team had to turn its engines down despite having every available vent cracked open to the maximum.

A comprehensive new package for Hockenheim continued the team's willingness to shed its skin, and a new front wing was complemented with a refreshed approach to the turning vanes around the flanks and refreshed rear wing endplates. It's an unrelenting approach that has guaranteed Mercedes five titles on the bounce - and a hatful of miracles would have to happen to deny the team a sixth.

What's next: Arguably, the German GP upgrade hadn't quite delivered the results Mercedes has needed so far; the washout race there preceded a Hungarian Grand Prix in which Red Bull was far too close for comfort.

The team needs to ratify its understanding of those upgrades, especially the changes to the cooling package, before it can continue to add piecemeal tweaks to the package.

Ferrari - Let down

The phrase 'flatter to deceive' is a well-known idiom, but applies perfectly to Ferrari so far. It was the pre-season favourite but Mercedes has made light work of it so far, and Red Bull now looks primed to relegate Ferrari to coming third in what was originally a two-horse race.

Ferrari now seems to be on the right track with regards to its development, although this has arguably been enacted far too late in the day to realistically overturn the deficit to Mercedes.

Throughout the early season, there were very few updates to speak of; the car ran in largely the same specification from testing during the first four races, save for a few detail changes to the floor. It attempted to work with the floor fins trialled last season, but these were still conspicuous by their absence in race trim - suggesting that Ferrari was unable to get them to work in the way expected.

It's the same old story at Ferrari; last year, the team's updates brought to Singapore were phased out by Sochi later that month, having failed to work as expected. Team principal Mattia Binotto explicitly ruled out correlation issues, but suggested that the CFD inputs had not been entirely conducive to providing a realistic picture of how the car would work - and the net result has been a front end that's not nearly as responsive as the drivers would like.

Changes to the front wing endplate to boost the inboard-loaded concept for Spain in May didn't cut into Mercedes' advantage, and so Ferrari had to take a different approach.

A tentative front wing change in France was the precursor to defining a new upgrade path, which seems to have built momentum; the nose was then tweaked for Austria, and in Hungary the car came sporting new bargeboards and boomerangs as the flanks increase in complexity. But still, the underperformance in the corners won't go away.

What's next: Ferrari's focus next will be on plonking on plenty more downforce, and it has some margin to play with in equalising it with the straightline performance. Spa and Monza should play to the SF90's strengths, but Singapore will be a litmus test for any second-half updates.

Red Bull - A wolf at the door

Everything pointed to a transitional year at Red Bull, and 2019 was supposed to be the season in which the Honda engineers would be allowed some time to bed in with the team and get an engine together for a tilt at the title in future seasons.

Except, it hasn't quite panned out like that, and the RB15 is beginning to look like the threat to Mercedes that Ferrari's SF90 should have been. Early on, the rear end seemed somewhat unhinged, but carefully targeted changes to the aero package have ironed that out and provided Max Verstappen with a car capable of winning races.

Very early on, the team recognised the importance of the bargeboard package and enacted a change halfway through week two of testing, but running was limited after Pierre Gasly broke the only new set in a hefty shunt at Campsa.

Red Bull continued to tweak its car, dropping the nose's air scoop for Monaco to dial in some quick-and-dirty downforce, but the biggest contributor to its extra burst of pace has been a very subtle change to the front wing.

By replotting the path of the airflow around the car, the aero at the rear seems to have enjoyed a new lease of life as Red Bull has developed its understanding of the package. Now armed with confidence in his car, along with a Honda engine that has come on leaps and bounds, Verstappen has arguably become the biggest threat to Lewis Hamilton's relentless march towards a sixth title.

What's next: Honda seems ready to deliver another update, which should once more help Red Bull to close the gap in the power stakes. Otherwise, building on the good work it has done since Austria is crucial, and the engineering staff must be relentless to maintain a consistent threat to Mercedes.

McLaren - Optimistic

The point at which McLaren defined itself as the fourth-best team on the grid this season, contrary to popular belief, didn't coincide with the Barcelona-spec upgrade.

The seeds were planted with that new package, but it did take McLaren a little bit of time to understand it. Carlos Sainz Jr praised the team for being "experimental" in free practice and, while the Canadian Grand Prix in June didn't produce the rewards that McLaren perhaps deserved, it was there where its season truly began.

In that Spain package, the team shifted its front wing philosophy and made further updates down the car to link up with the new flow patterns created. It took a few rounds to make sense of it all, but once McLaren's engineers had fully understood the effects of the new aero the team has enjoyed a new lease of life.

For France, McLaren bolstered its front end with the extended pushrod bracket mounted to the upright to assist with maintaining a more consistent aerodynamic platform during turn-in. Last season's upgrades rarely worked as inherent aero problems stripped the car of downforce mid-corner. This year, the team has worked towards a more targeted approach - and it's worked so far.

What's next: There's still a performance shortfall in the low-speed corners, although a higher-downforce rear wing in Hungary gave the MCL34 a timely performance boost. Finding more downforce in time for Singapore will also be crucial for McLaren to step up to the next level and lock out fourth in the constructors' championship.

Toro Rosso - Lucky

After Daniil Kvyat's surprise podium at Hockenheim, Toro Rosso can count itself a little fortunate to be as high as fifth in the standings. The team has been well within the midfield mix, frequently battling for the lower reaches of the points, but Monaco and Germany have been the high watermarks.

Development has been solid enough for a team of its stature, although it will never have the same budget afforded to it as the lead Red Bull team - as a result, developments haven't been as forthcoming. Nonetheless, recent bargeboard changes should give Toro Rosso a helping hand as the teams around it continue their technological advances, and Honda's progression will also assist the team - should upgrades be ready for use at the power circuits.

Can Toro Rosso do more? Certainly; the rather oversized T-wing that has been added to the car in recent rounds points to a concerted effort to find more downforce. With a potentially demoralised Gasly re-entering the fold, a balanced rear end will be required to boost the Red Bull reject's confidence.

What's next: Toro Rosso's recent bargeboard developments, after a brief sojourn in Hockenheim practice, made it onto the car at the Hungaroring. With potential further horsepower from Honda, the team should be able to continue at its current rate of progress. The STR14 is a good all-rounder, and should have enough in reserve to keep consistently challenging for ninths and 10ths.

Renault - High and dry

For a team that insisted that it had changed everything from 2018 into the new season, Renault's RS19 looked alarmingly similar to its previous charge. Sure, one cannot feasibly judge a book by its cover, but it seems that the team is currently chasing its tail and is crying out for some fresh impetus to push it back towards the front.

The development curve has been solid enough and there's no shortage of work going on to close up the gap to McLaren, but the swathes of changes brought to the car in France haven't worked as expected. The nose, bargeboards and rear wing all received healthy doses of attention, but couldn't deliver the gains expected - and some of the smaller changes have been rolled back.

McLaren is showing what the engine can do, so that's not the problem; instead, Renault seems unwilling to commit the same resources that the other manufacturers on the grid do. How the team emerges from the summer is crucial, and if it has been able to successfully navigate its way through a more fruitful development path, then the battle for fourth is not over.

If not, and instead Renault remains mired in the midfield, then expect heads to roll.

What's next: Renault's RS19 has a somewhat narrow operating window, and whatever it did to get the car working in Britain after a dismal round in Austria needs to be investigated. Upgrades are expected, although not until "well after the summer break" according to Daniel Ricciardo. There's a suggestion of a lack of ambition that the team must also address.

Alfa Romeo - No surprises

At the start of the season, Alfa Romeo was vaunted as a solid midfield contender and was expected to factor in the lower reaches of the points more often than not. And, in Kimi Raikkonen's hands at least, that has proven to be very much the case.

Currently occupying seventh in the standings, Alfa has largely picked up from where it left off as Sauber last year; then, the exponential progress of Charles Leclerc and the C37 rocketed the team from the back into frequent points finishers and Q3 cameos.

Progress this season hasn't been demonstrably as rapid as last year, although it was post-summer where the car came alive. It may still prove to be so this year, and Alfa Romeo has stuck to its leftfield approaches to aerodynamics - albeit with a few changes to the mix. In recent races, changes to the front end have been prevalent, as the team joined the trend of adding a cape to the nose, while also tweaking the endplates to yield more downforce.

The anhedral front wing drew prolonged glances in pre-season, and the team has stuck to its guns with minimal modifications throughout the season. Alfa Romeo has already tested its expected Spa specification of rear wing and, courtesy of its Ferrari powerplant offering bucketloads of straight-line oomph, the two rounds coming next should be a real chance for a healthy points haul.

What's next: As mentioned, Spa-specific changes are in the pipeline and the C38 is clearly capable in high-speed corners, but there's an ongoing struggle with a low-speed environment; Monaco was the weakest round for Alfa by far. Hungary showed improvement in that regard, but more is needed for Singapore. Antonio Giovinazzi must start performing in the races.

Racing Point - In limbo

Racing Point, in its old Force India guise at least, has been a team capable of punching well above its weight. So far this season, save for Lance Stroll's well-timed pit gamble in Germany, it has yet to do that.

The team is afforded some leniency after the early development of the RP19 was stunted by last year's financial woes, but has been making some large-scale changes to it over the season in an attempt to haul itself back up the order.

Even as early as Melbourne, the bargeboards received an overhaul after the team suggested its test car was a somewhat "vanilla" specification. And while there have been changes to the nose, as Racing Point sniffed around solutions to improve the front end, the team emerged at Hockenheim with a "diet" RP19; cooling systems were shuffled around to make way for some corset-tight bodywork, before the front suspension was modified in Hungary to enhance the front-end turn-in further.

The 2019 season is a transitional one for Racing Point as it begins to reinvigorate its depleted infrastructure. But there's still value in getting as much out of the car as it can, for it will surely form the basis of next year's racer.

What's next: The team has always been very good at Spa, and Monza should also present an opportunity to enlarge its current points collection. A new front wing is expected in Singapore, where there should be a number of other ancillary components to tide Racing Point over until the end of the year.

Haas - House of cards

It's very difficult to adequately cobble together a technical review of a team that doesn't quite understand its own car. Haas is having a fraught 2019 so far, and for all of the on-track and off-track issues that have reared their heads, the confusion over whether the VF-19's development has been completely ineffectual continues. In truth, nobody really knows the answer.

In testing and in Melbourne, Haas seemed to be set to reprise its 2018 role in the battle for fourth in the constructors' standings. Since then, the team has been the most unpredictable of the lot, delivering fantastic qualifying results only to sink down the order in the races. Romain Grosjean believes that the upgrades brought to Barcelona have only served to make the car worse, and has been so unhappy with the rear-end grip that he has rolled the car specification back to how it ran at the start of the year.

Kevin Magnussen, meanwhile, has been running a latest-spec package for the past three rounds for comparison - although a clash with Grosjean at Silverstone contrived to rob Haas of the potential data on offer. Whether the team has been able to make any inroads into understanding the car and the Pirelli tyres over the summer will be crucial to both this season and next.

The team seems to be on shaky ground and, with questions over the team's future viability, the Haas house of cards seems to be in danger of falling.

What's next: Haas will end its split-spec running at Spa, and both cars will now benefit from a revised Hockenheim package - as it seemed to be largely on par with the original Melbourne spec. If Haas is able to perform, the team can finally kick on and enjoy a strong end to the year. If not, then some serious soul-searching may be in order...

Williams - Daydreaming

When Williams's emergence in pre-season testing came two days later than everyone else, there was a distinct feeling of gloom among the team. The car was visually less advanced than every other team's, and rumours of ill-fitting parts requiring hasty fixes with a die grinder suggested that all was not well in the production facility.

But since then, the team has been chomping at the bit to understand the FW42 and make changes to make it less unpredictable for both George Russell and Robert Kubica to work with. Significant bargeboard changes have been forthcoming throughout the year, and more is expected to come as the team has a backlog of developments that have already seen the windtunnel.

Williams enjoyed its best races before the summer break; Kubica managed a surprise point at Hockenheim when both Alfas were penalised, while George Russell almost made Q2 with a strong performance in Hungary qualifying. At the latter of the two rounds, Williams made great strides in practice and found more performance in adequate tyre preparation - so it seems the team has tapped into a vein of further performance gains.

After the nightmares of its start to 2019, Williams is finally dreaming of making its way up the order - and that's encouraging to see.

What's next: Senior race engineer Dave Robson confirmed at Silverstone that the Williams windtunnel model is definitely a few steps ahead of the race car, so expect development to continue until the end of the year. The team has announced that the FW43 will be heavily rooted in this year's car, so there's still development potential there.