How an F1 tech writer experiences launch season

Expensive events in far-flung locales just to pull the covers away from a barely different new livery. F1's official showcar, brazenly branded as a team's new car just to avoid revealing the real thing. Spy shots, fake bodywork, and copycats; late cars, ill-fitting components, and hacked apps. These are all just part of Formula 1's launch and test cycle, a carousel of 'anything goes' and wild vacillations between excess and minimal effort.

2024 is the sixth F1 launch season I've covered since joining Autosport, and each one has been surprisingly different as global conditions and trends have somewhat dictated how F1 teams have planned their launch events. Physical launches subsided for a good few years as the world was entwined in COVID's stranglehold, but the bluster has returned - although this hasn't stopped some teams from persisting with online-only launches. Others will wait until testing to shove the car out of the garage in front of a wall of snappers, and then get on with their day's run plan.

In effect, launch season is effectively an elaborate game of 'spot the difference', and it usually goes like this: pull up pictures of last year's car, look at the launch shots, and list the biggest differences. These are going to form the basis of features and the magazine spread because they're the changes that other people are likely to notice, but it's up to us to figure out why the team has made the change. Why are the sidepods different? Why is that little fin there? What on earth is that supposed to be?

On other occasions, the spot-the-difference phase will take one second before the disappointing realisation that last year's car has been dolled up to look like the new one. It's likely that we'd not read the small print; we revisit the press materials and notice that the team has billed it as a "season launch", the universal indicator that nothing new is going to be shown to us.

Sometimes, the team will push forward a technical director to explain some of the key changes, without revealing their hand too much. They'll give some indication, albeit in deliberately broad brush strokes, but it offers a starting point for a car's new addition.

Thankfully, nothing is ever entirely new in F1 and design decisions in 2024 might have their genesis in a past season; this is the opportunity to roll back the mental Rolodex and pick out similar concepts with fully explained features. From there, one can extrapolate and come up with a few reasons why a team has implemented a certain aspect in its new car. That's not to say that we don't get things wrong, but generally upgrades fit into well-defined boxes: adds more downforce, reduces drag, manages airflow, improves performance window.

When a team announces a 'season launch' event, it's usually a sign that the car being presented is a repainted model from the previous year

Photo by: Williams

Explaining the upgrades is the hard part. It's very easy to hurl tons of jargon at the reader, and I'll be honest, I've probably done this multiple times. I try to break it down into a way that your toddler, tortoise, or pet rock might understand, but it's not always entirely easy.

Visual concepts always help: I always like to use the image of a garden hose in explaining Bernoulli's principle - which, at its core, is a mathematical theorem that shows total mechanical energy of a fluid remains constant. Here's the breakdown: you've got a garden hose, and you've turned on the tap. Water gushes out pretty languidly from the end, so let's put our thumb over half of it.

In this instance, you're increasing the pressure of the water behind your thumb, so the velocity slows down to equalise that formula for mechanical energy. When the water moves past your thumb, the pressure reduces relative to that in the hose and so the water moves at a vastly increased velocity - and hence, the spray of water. It's not entirely that simple, but the idea should be there in your mind's eye.

Trends over the past year instead inform what we expect to see from a team, and this also helps to determine if we're looking at a bona-fide car or if there are instances where things are being hidden from view

Of course, many of the reasons behind a design decision will remain more elusive; without CFD data, it's a lot more difficult to predict how a car will work in anything other than straight-line conditions. In a straight line, you can probably predict where the flow might go, or where a vortex might be produced, but in yaw, it becomes a lot more difficult as the car is a lot more dynamic when a turning force is applied. But, if there's anyone out there with a CAD package and a CFD program licence key, it'd definitely make explaining things a touch easier...if we've got the processing power.

The way that we've covered launch season has changed in those six years too. In 2019, when the world was a very different place, the entire launch season was compressed into about a week. In my first year of the job and being massively eager to prove myself, I spent inordinate amounts of time focusing on the most minute of details just to show that I knew something.

When it came to making the videos, however, I never felt like I could explain things particularly well and probably did a disservice to the viewer expecting some tangible degree of insight. With no on-camera training, I found being the first few videos exceedingly difficult and an unpleasant experience - six years later, I still feel exactly the same.

With a bit more experience of how launches play out, it's more important to look at the bigger-picture aspects. Trends over the past year instead inform what we expect to see from a team, and this also helps to determine if we're looking at a bonafide car or if there are instances where things are being hidden from view.

Discerning what is a genuine design decision or pure launch season obfuscation is part of the challenge

Photo by: Haas F1 Team

Take Monday's Sauber launch, for example; certain aspects from the renders look like genuine decisions taken for 2024, but both the front and rear wings looked somewhat primitive compared to those seen over 2023. When a physical rendition of the C44 was wheeled out at the team's London launch, the rear wing looked suspiciously like the one produced by F1 for its 2022 showcar mock-up. Thus, one expects that there's more to come in Bahrain.

However, this was altogether less infuriating than Red Bull's approach to its car launch in 2022. Revealing a re-liveried showcar and proclaiming it to be the RB18 on its social media channels felt like it was pulling the wool over many peoples' eyes. Since F1 can do little to govern how launches are carried out, teams will only show you what they want to.

As someone who appreciates honesty and clarity, I don't entirely mind this as long as there are disclaimers - but pretending one thing is another is rather irksome. I'd probably care less if I didn't do this as a job, but I do, so I do care!

JBL's launch season memories

Over those six years of scrutinising launches and staring at photographs and renders, one has a few memories of launch season (and, by association, test season) at its most madcap. Here's a handful of those moments from recent years - some fun, others utterly infuriating.

1. What on earth is that Alfa Romeo wing? (2019)

Alfa Romeo's front wing got people talking in 2019 when first images were spotted

Photo by: Lorenzo Moro

It's 14 February, and McLaren is launching its 2019 car at its Woking base. There's a buzz about the place; the all-new line-up of Carlos Sainz and Lando Norris underpins the fresh sense of optimism at the team, and McLaren is more than generous with the filming time we can gather with the drivers and the car. And, as it's Valentines' Day, Alfa Romeo sends the media a little love letter with sneak previews of its own C38 as we're wrapping up at the MTC. It takes no time at all for one's gaze to be drawn to a very odd-looking front wing.

Okay, some context. The aero revisions brought in place for 2017 and 2018 did little to help the on-track product; rather, the wider cars and wing positions actively made things worse. F1 decided to simplify the front wings and raise the rear wings to try to control the amount of 'dirty air' being produced by the cars.

But the aerodynamicists, having been denied the outwash tools that they'd used to turn airflow around the front wheels, sought to find new ways of doing this. A popular method involved making the inboard part of the front wing larger to generate the downforce, and then tapering the elements away towards the endplate to let the air wash out naturally.

Alfa Romeo had done this, but with an aggressively anhedral layout. Moreover, it had fused together the upper two elements, which diverged again at the tips. Looking back at it now, it doesn't quite seem particularly radical - but at the time, it was a baffling design choice that prompted a rush back to the office to do a video about it.

2. Renault's glimpses of nothing (2020)

Plenty of chat, but very little shown of the car beyond four non-descript renders at the 2020 Renault 'launch'

Photo by: Motorsport Images

It's hard to remember the genesis of the "season launch", but Renault took it to new levels of meaningless in 2020. It presented its driving line-up of Daniel Ricciardo and Esteban Ocon, the team management spoke a bit (presumably about how the team intended to sit between fourth and sixth in the championship), and then four images of unliveried car parts were revealed.

PLUS: Why Renault's "glimpses" can't become a self-fulfilling prophecy

Speculation that the team was behind in its development ensued but, instead, the team explained that it didn't want to show a "fake", launch-spec car that would have little bearing on what would be revealed in 2020 testing. But it didn't quite come off like that.

Rather, it appeared that F1's perennial underachievers had just been deliberately evasive; it hadn't gone for a livery launch because it was sticking with the yellow-and-black number, but full renders were an option that the team chose not to take. Thankfully, the pushback has ensured that nobody has since launched their car - or rather, lack thereof - in a similar manner.

3. Aston Martin delivers first "proper" 2022 launch (2022)

Aston Martin showed the rest how to do a 'proper' launch of new ground effect cars in 2022

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

The excitement about 2022's launch season was palpable, largely because we'd been waiting a whole year for the next generation of F1 cars to be unveiled. COVID necessitated the pushback of the rules from 2021 to 2022, and the complete lack of a benchmark for the return of ground effects resulted in the design process essentially being carried out blind.

Haas and Red Bull were the first two scheduled launches, but these barely counted: Haas sent out some images of an old iteration of its design that bore little resemblance to the real VF-22, and Red Bull pretended the showcar was the RB18. Luckily, Aston Martin did everyone a favour by actually unveiling its real AMR22. No bullshit, no diversionary tactics, just a straightforward launch of a new car.

Helpfully, the car was visually striking; the British Racing Green had been tweaked slightly to help the car pop more on TV, and neon yellow trim replaced the BWT-influenced pink used in 2021. It launched with an interesting sidepod treatment too, being quite wide, featuring a heavy undercut, and pockmarked with small fins along the top. We had no real indication if this was going to be good, as there was little else to go on. But it got us excited about what the other teams would do, and 2022 kicked off with wildly differing philosophies.

4. Williams' FW42 disasterclass (2019)

Uninspiring Williams livery matched the car's on-track performance after late delivery and stunted test programme

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

Williams had hit the bottom of the barrel in 2018; its FW41 was slow, and the team was relying on Lance Stroll and Sergey Sirotkin to bring money in as the cashflow situation was not particularly healthy. Stroll went to Racing Point in 2019 when his father Lawrence bought Force India, and Sirotkin could not keep his drive. Mercedes offered an engine discount for George Russell to take one seat, while Polish oil giant PKN Orlen stumped up the cash to help Robert Kubica achieve a miraculous F1 comeback - eight years after his almost career-ending rally crash in Andorra.

Tech company ROKiT emerged to replace Martini as the title sponsor, and the car was rendered in an unappealing white and light blue gradient - it looked like a five-minute job in Photoshop with the airbrush tool. The car itself, under the supervision of technical director Paddy Lowe, was late. It missed the opening two days of testing in Barcelona and, when it did arrive, parts of the braking system did not fit together properly. Elsewhere, there were suspension parts and mirrors that were declared illegal, requiring further redesigns.

It was a disastrous start to 2019, which rather set the tone for the season; Lowe's head rolled after the early struggles, as team principal Claire Williams desperately sought to steady the ship. Russell was the sole bright spark in a season dogged by a poor car, while the team also began to endure a strained relationship with Kubica behind closed doors. The Pole claimed the only point of the season in the rain-affected German Grand Prix, before he was replaced by Nicholas Latifi for 2020.

5. Racing Point's foray into familiarity (2020)

The car Racing Point launched in 2020 was merely a re-livered version of its 2019 chassis, before its true plan for the year was known

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

Among the 2020 preamble, Racing Point became the last team of the year to unveil its apparent car - introducing a revised BWT-influenced livery in Austria. But it wasn't the real RP20, but a re-liveried 2019 masquerading as the new machine; this was another instance of the spot-the-difference alarm being painfully quiet.

But, as it emerged in testing, there was a reason for this deception. Images of the RP20 on the opening day revealed that it was not a facsimile of its own 2019 car - instead, it was very heavily 'inspired' by the Mercedes W10. Everything from tip to tail was incredibly similar to Mercedes' 2019 machinery, naturally accompanied by allegations of copying. "Tracing Point" was one nickname thrown at the team, but technical director Andrew Green waved away those suggestions. Instead, he reasoned, why wouldn't you take more inspiration from the best car on the grid?

And it worked, as the team eventually achieved its first race win since the Jordan days. There was the small matter of a 15-point deduction, as Renault successfully protested Racing Point's rear brake ducts. The team had been found to have based its rear brake ducts on the Mercedes' CAD drawings, something it hadn't bought in from Mercedes in the previous year (unlike the front ducts) and thus was considered to be a Mercedes-designed part.

The first pull-out of the Racing Point garage was a surprise to be sure, but a welcome one - and it gave the team reason to be cheerful having nearly gone out of business two years before.

When its real RP20 arrived in testing, Racing Point sprung a surprise with its clear links to the previous year's Mercedes

Photo by: Andrew Hone / Motorsport Images