Five tech talking points from Mugello

Formula 1's first racing visit to Mugello was, arguably, a success. The first few laps were incredibly messy, granted - and there's probably plenty of carbonfibre manufacturers rubbing their hands together with glee at the prospect of repairs - but the Tuscan Grand Prix felt completely unconventional.

The results table didn't entirely back that up, of course, and 20 Formula 1 drivers tackled an unfamiliar circuit for 59 laps with Lewis Hamilton coming out on top - but Mugello put on a somewhat madcap and zany F1 race that will surely stick out as a memorable encounter.

Curiously enough, for the third leg of the third triple-header of the season, there were a few new technical talking points to mull over throughout the weekend. Some have implications for the future and in development for 2021, but others were more pertinent to the unique challenge of Mugello, which manages to defy its compact and technical nature by being surprisingly rapid.

Here's a wrap of five of the biggest technical talking points of the Tuscan GP weekend.

Mercedes continues pursuit of perfection

For the Spa and Monza rounds, Mercedes refined its bargeboard package. Having been presumably a low-downforce option to deal with the greater top speeds achieved at both circuits, Mercedes also kept the configuration for Mugello. Compared to the older spec, these bargeboards have been mounted a bit further back for the last trio of races.

The shape of the mounting point is different too; the curved leading edge profile has been replaced with a straighter-edge component, attached to the bulkhead with a small metal bracket rather than the curvature of the element.

Naturally, all of these changes towards the front will have an impact on the airflow patterns further back, and Mercedes has continued to ring the changes around the sidepods too. The turning vanes in front of the sidepod inlet have now received a reangled fin within and, looking further down, the lowest horizontal element on the vanes themselves has been removed.

This is to make room for an additional L-shaped vane underneath, helping to offer more control over the airflow passing around the sidepod undercut.

For Mugello, Mercedes added to those bargeboard changes by including a new front wing. Over the past two seasons, a key characteristic of a Mercedes front wing has been the split-tip penultimate element that means the team can generate and release the tip vortex produced by the elements' ends in a slightly different manner, and to satisfy the five-elements regulation the top element is shortened.

But for Mugello (below, left), Mercedes strayed away from that design and brought the top element down, without the split-end element underneath. The wing tips are now closer together, presumably aiming to drop the tip vortex produced at either side earlier - and to work in tandem with the new bargeboard specification further down. By changing the front wing, you change how the airflow interacts with the rest of the car, and it seems that this has been Mercedes' prerogative with its mid-season changes to find more performance from its already-impressive W11.

McLaren get noses in front for 2021

As the development allowance over the 2020-21 off-season is considerably limited - owing to the commercial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic necessitating the carryover of this year's cars - teams are looking to use this season's practice sessions to bed new parts in for 2021.

McLaren tested out a new Mercedes-inspired nose (below, inset) during the Tuscan Grand Prix's first practice session on Carlos Sainz Jr's car to investigate any changes to the aero package, which the team will then spend time back at base assessing it as a viable option for next year.

By opting for the Mercedes-style nose, which has also been adopted by Racing Point and Renault this year, the team can expand on the side of the "cape" attached either side to interact with the airflow shed from the front wing.

The mounting pylons to the front wing are set underneath the nose, helping to minimise the overall blockage that the nose produces to the underside of the car, while also using the cape to stabilise the front end.

This is a design that Mercedes has not deviated from since 2015, resisting the urge to switch to the thumb-tip crash structure - and perhaps more teams will take the six-time championship winning team's lead in future.

McLaren struggled with the effect of wind during qualifying, which the team says set them back.

Sainz explained on Saturday that "our car is very sensitive to tailwind mainly, to tailwind corners, and very good in headwind corners. Once you get in a tow, what you have is a lot more tailwind.

"That's why in places like Monza we were talking about trying not to go in the tow of some of our competitors because we found that that generated a tailwind in our car, and we don't like how that tailwind reacts in our car. It's something we are investigating, and we are trying to improve, and trying to understand."

DRS powerful, but dirty air even more powerful

Mugello appears to be, for F1 cars, a circuit of two personalities. With DRS allied to the colossal front stretch, overtaking with the tow and rear wing wide open appears to result in some pretty slam-dunk moves. But at the same time, for the fast sweeping corners later in the lap, the cars get a pretty hefty blast of dirty air from the car ahead.

So unless a driver had a significant speed advantage around the rest of the lap, it seemed that DRS was the only real way to get moves done. In the Formula 2 and Formula 3 races, there were a few other passing spots if a driver felt brave enough - but again, the speed delta between the cars in both series are often affected by tyre wear.

That's not a slight on modern F1 at all, and "dirty air" has been a word long in the motorsporting lexicon since the advent of aerodynamics. But what Mugello had was a significant chance of punishing errors, thanks to the plethora of grassy areas and gravel traps, which generated excitement in a wholly different manner.

The ability to overtake is just one element of what makes an exciting race, and although the DRS zone could have been shortened, the lack of other suitable areas for a second zone and the winding middle sector means that it's difficult to get moves done anywhere else.

Racing Point gets tighter packaging

Racing Point's new updates for Mugello didn't exactly come home in one piece, as Lance Stroll's lap 43 shunt at Arrabbiata 2 caused quite a considerable amount of damage to the car. With one new aero update for the Racing Point team for the Tuscan Grand Prix, the team handed it to Stroll in deference to his higher championship placing over team-mate Sergio Perez, and he made good use of it up until his accident - the cause of which remains unclear at this point.

The updates included an all-new engine cover, which formed a fold over the sidepod and descended into a ramp section to bring airflow to the top of the floor. Presumably, the air passing around the sidepod can either be directed outwards by the fins and slots along the floor's edge, or get tucked in along the Coke-bottle. The ramped trailing edge also helps to bring air along the bodyline and improve the flow to the diffuser.

Given that Mercedes and Williams have similar sidepod designs, this is something that the Mercedes powertrain arrangement allows, with the radiators slanting upwards towards the inlet.

Funnily enough, Racing Point also made further Mercedes-inspired changes to its front brake ducts, ever so slightly playing with fire following the FIA's legal ruling over the ducts at the rear, along with further minor modifications to the rear-wing endplates to generate a little more downforce.

Said metaphorical fire became reality for Stroll's stricken RP20 following his crash, which required more than a cursory spurt from the marshals' fire extinguishers as smoke began to billow out.

"It's the way the cookie crumbles", Stroll lamented post-race - with a cookie presumably an allegory for his broken bodywork.

Red Bull suffers starting woes

Max Verstappen was tantalisingly side-by-side with Lewis Hamilton off the line, but bogged down immediately after drawing alongside the six-time champion and was swallowed up by the midfield pack before his race-ending involvement on the first-lap fracas at Turn 2. Meanwhile, Alex Albon also endured three difficult standing starts, and had to rely on his swashbuckling overtaking moves to secure a maiden podium at Mugello.

Verstappen's issues appeared to be power unit related - unrelated to the flurry of work on his car on the grid - and lost power early on to slide down the order, while Albon "just couldn't get off the line" in any of the starts and lost ground on each one.

"[Max's] issue on the grid was something different, it was to do with the rear lights and nothing to do with the actual power unit," Christian Horner said after the race. "But on the formation lap everything looked OK and then suddenly there was this big electrical issue.

"He got a great initial launch and had done the hard bit, getting ahead of Lewis, but it was enormously frustrating for him because he was really up for it today. You could see we had a good race car and I don't think it would have been a walk in the park for Mercedes.

"[Alex's start] is something with the guys from Honda we need to work on, we need to replicate these conditions and understand why is it that we are losing power at the starts. It is something we definitely need to improve."