How F1 teams create a third of their performance

Imagine a well-designed front wing, working to perfection. The airflow is happily being channelled around the front tyres, the outwash lost to the new rules has been partially recovered, and there's a strong vortex being shed from both sides of the wing's neutral section. It's a fantastic starting point, but to exploit it to the full the rest of the car has to be just as good.

It's like starting a relay with a quick runner. Sure, it puts the team in a great position, but if the other three runners can't hack it, then the initial effort was wasted. The second runner has to be as fast as the first, much like the bargeboard package has to mesh perfectly with what the front wing does.

Since the redefinition of the bargeboard area in 2017's aero changes, this piece of real estate has become hugely complex in a very short space of time. Although the intent seems to have been to reintroduce the sweeping, one-piece bargeboard pieces seen in the previous decade, today's bargeboards are a collection of intricately positioned fins, cut-outs and slots to aggressively condition the airflow off the front wing, guide tyre wake away from the opening of the floor, and turn airflow around the sidepod undercut to bring it into play further down the car.

In other words, there's plenty for the bargeboards to do.

Right now, they're even more important than ever. Racing Point technical director Andy Green suggests that under last year's formula they contributed about a quarter of the car's performance, while 2019's bargeboard packages have "probably got to be worth around a third of the car performance. If you took them off you'd lose seconds - it's massive".

Preceding the main bargeboard geometry, teams commonly employ flow conditioners underneath the nose - serving as a node linking the front wing and the midriff of the car. Usually comprising small slats with short chord lengths, they define the path of the inboard airflow - stopping the vortices produced either side from merging and creating a mass of uncontrollable turbulent flow.

Then it's up to the bargeboard to strut its stuff. Under the new rules it's vertically shorter, to open up the flanks of the bulkhead to greater sponsor opportunities, but most teams have responded by extending their designs forward. This presents the opportunity to pick up airflow sooner, but that means more thought is required at the design stage to optimise the flow.

Looking at the Mercedes solution, the leading edge opens with a trio of slats forming a mini bargeboard in its own right, just ahead of the front mounting point. Where this attaches to the car, the top edge squirts the airflow down to be worked at the front face of the floor. This forms the main bargeboard panel, and is followed by two breaks in the top edge of the surface to continue to bring that airflow downwards.

There's no need for masses of complexity if each team's holistic package works without it, but F1's relentless pursuit of marginal gains often steers designs towards tiny, intricate arrays of bodywork

At the bottom of the bargeboards, there's multiple cutouts to tidy up airflow on arrival, and the angled slots in front of the main panel continue the work - they're wave-shaped on the Mercedes to lift some of the airflow and bring it over the top of the floor opening. The trailing edge of the main bargeboard surface is broken up into further serrations to grab the airflow and send it off to the outboard front corner of the floor.

Then there's the turning vanes mounted to the sidepod, which serve as a continuation of the bargeboard geometry while also peeling wake from the front tyres and turning it into something more useful. The second of these swoops down below the third, channelling airflow around the sidepod undercut at the position of the floor scroll. Using the attachment points to send airflow downwards assists with developing the airflow around the bottom half of the sidepods.

By comparison, Ferrari's design looks a lot - without wanting to grossly oversimplify - cleaner. Airflow pick-up from the front also comes from a trio of fins, but they're more greatly spaced than the Mercedes versions - suggesting a less disturbed trail of air emanating from the front end.

There's also horizontal slots in that area to quickly condition flow, something the Mercedes also has, but Ferrari's lead into a less fragmented collection of turning vanes. The top of the main bargeboard panel features a pair of fins and a horizontal piece to manage the flow shedding from the suspension wishbones. From there, the flow drops to another horizontal piece, which sweeps towards the turning vanes along the sidepod.

Ferrari has gone with a continuation of its philosophy from the past two years, albeit lowered for the new dimensions. The interconnected pieces of bodywork form a square shape, but all curl inward at the bottom edge to pick up airflow from the front tyres and gently turn it around the sidepods.

Of course, there's no need for masses of complexity if the holistic package of each team works without it. But F1's relentless pursuit of marginal gains often steers designs towards tiny, intricate arrays of bodywork, used to deliver the desired pressure values in downforce-producing areas.

Like the others, Red Bull has the small pick-up vanes at the front of the floor, but has done things a little differently, using the absolute bounds of the available bodywork area to retain a high-sided leading edge. That falls away rapidly, leading into a succession of serrations and a large winglet over the top, much like the fin of a manta ray.

Here, there's a number of cut-outs to mimic the slots positioned in the floor, done to satisfy the regulations. This links up to the vertical bodywork on the front of the sidepod, edged forward to pick up tyre wake and push it past the vane mounted to the side crash structure. There's a large zone between the bargeboard and the undercut of the inlet, presumably to ensure there's enough space for clean airflow to make its way under the floor.

From the three "traditional" leading teams, there's three clear philosophies; Mercedes uses as many small pieces as possible to extract the maximum performance, Ferrari appears to seek a lower-drag design, while Red Bull is rather three-dimensional in its approach.

Toro Rosso's solution is probably more rooted in Ferrari's design philosophy. Visually, they're quite different, but Toro Rosso has also been very clean in its approach

With those boxes, the rest of the field can perhaps be categorised. Renault's design is very closely aligned with Mercedes' approach, folding the mounting point at the front downwards to direct airflow towards the floor and featuring a similar main bargeboard.

There are also multiple slots in the floor section - especially at the leading edge - visible from plan view, which are all about cleaning up airflow before it reaches the underside of the car.

Compared with the neatly sculpted sidepod conditioners used in previous seasons, this year's design is a lot more pragmatic and feature squarer slats to salvage as much as it can from the mass of the tyre wake.

Haas also falls into that camp, and takes the leading edge turning vanes to an extreme, featuring three banks to generate plenty of initial outwash at that area. The mounting point, adorned by a decal of a hare, is also similar to Mercedes' solution, brushing some airflow downwards to around the face of the sidepod inlet. The serrations at the trailing edge are low, perhaps finding that the flow upstream comes at it from a reduced height.

This is consistent with the low positioning of the sidepod turning vanes, shaped like Venetian blinds, which pick up the tyre's wake and shift it away from the floor's opening.

Toro Rosso's solution is probably more rooted in Ferrari's design philosophy; visually, they're quite different, but like its Italian counterpart it's very clean in its approach. The leading edge has a fin positioned near the top mounting, sweeping down and bringing airflow to the serrations to be thrown outboard. Tyre wake is dealt with through minimal appendages, either suggesting that there's more to come in this area, or that Toro Rosso has managed to successfully complete a less-is-more approach.

Perhaps, with Ferrari and Toro Rosso's front wing approaches, the pared-down level of componentry is a result of a more pronounced outwash effect at the front - but admittedly, that's mere speculation.

Alfa Romeo - running a similar front wing to Ferrari and Toro Rosso - has a bargeboard package that's not outwardly complex on first glance. But that belies the intricacies it has, especially with the fins mounted along the top edge of the floor to work the airflow as hard as possible, while the leading edge is positioned to immediately link up with the flow conditioners in front.

There's lots of ways to skin a cat, and there's so much variation in bargeboard concepts with fewer restrictions on their design. But that means there's so much more room for development

Racing Point's adaptation is something that's not cluttered by endless tiny vanes, instead continuing with an evolutionary design it's perfected over the past few seasons.

More aggressive flow conditioners between the wheels sends the flow to those positioned further down at the bargeboard opening, while the airflow off the suspension components is helped by the downwards-angled mounting point. That feeds air to the serrations around the top, channelling it around to the sidepod undercut.

McLaren, meanwhile, has something that more closely resembles the Red Bull '3D' ethos, mounting a large 'boomerang' wing behind the front wheels to keep the tyre wake away from the sidepod inlet.

There's a short bargeboard positioned next to the main element, creating a suction zone to channel airflow around to the edge of the floor more adeptly, while the sidepod vane is rather no-nonsense, teaming up with the 'boomerang' to turn air around the car. Last year's MCL33 was prone to losing grip mid-corner, and being able to have more wake control stops it from spilling into the floor and upsetting the balance.

Lastly, Williams can now be compared with the rest of the field, and it's turned up with a design that's perhaps a bit of a Ferrari/Red Bull hybrid, albeit toned down at the main bargeboard element.

There's four distinct pieces; the main pair are linked by a small attachment, with one smaller bargeboard helping out at the leading edge and another playing backstop just before the floor opens up.

It's in the sidepod turning vanes that things get interesting, and it almost seems like Williams is being heavy-handed in its approach to them - throwing a lot of slats together. This suggests that one of the previous car's biggest bugbears was the effect of tyre wake on the floor, and this is a concerted effort to clean that up.

There's lots of different ways to skin a cat, and there's so much more variation in bargeboard concepts with less tight restrictions on their design. But that means there's so much more room for development, and anything that looks a bit underdeveloped today could be replaced in Melbourne with something more intricate.

So, expect a battle for bargeboard supremacy this season, especially if they're contributing the proportion of overall performance that Green suggests. A well-conceived solution, after all, could make a huge difference wherever a team is in the field.