How five tech battlegrounds shaped Formula 1 in 2022

When a new ruleset comes into play, engineers are effectively penning their designs blindfolded until the start of the first test. A hint or two might appear from discussions within technical meetings, particularly when a team wants to try to stack the odds in its favour with the wording of the rules, but ultimately the directions taken with car design remain unknown until the opening test – or, in Formula 1’s marketing spiel, ‘pre-season track session’. And it was thus with F1’s 2022 aerodynamic overhaul.

With a return of ground-effects after 40 years on hiatus, the designers had a new challenge to consider in developing an efficient and effective underbody. Since the venturi tunnels underneath the car are much more potent at high speeds, this was going to shift the performance window quite considerably compared to the flat-bottomed cars; low-speed corners were going to be an altogether clunky experience for the driver, offset by the greater grip on offer in the high-speed sections.

Elsewhere, the front and rear wings were more closely controlled to reduce the overall wake of the car, meaning that the cars would theoretically be able to follow much more closely through corners. The highly complex bargeboards of the 2017-21 era cars were also removed to enhance that effect, since the predilection to shove airflow outwards to manage tyre-wake flow was a key sticking point in F1’s desire to ‘spice up the show’. There were also further additions to the aerodynamics, with wheel deflectors and covers accompanying the new Pirelli-shod 18-inch wheels.

The new era started off encouragingly, even if one team ran away with things, but the measures to balance the field with aero testing will likely help in the coming seasons.

“I think it did improve the ability of cars to follow each other,” says FIA head of single-seater matters Nikolas Tombazis. “I think that, in combination with the tyres, did help. Clearly a good race needs also to be close to each other fighting, and the second half of this season, it was not so close. There was a clear-cut winner, of course.

“But I do think that’s going to be quite a lot closer next year again, and with convergence, I think that will lead to some very good races. Overall this year, the races were generally quite exciting. I don’t think it was for little gain; I think the gain was reasonable. I can confirm it was a lot of effort!”

In terms of development, however, key themes emerged as designs began to show their first signs of convergence. Here are the five biggest battlegrounds on the technical front, and the most interesting innovations in each area.

Losing weight and saving money

Teams employed stays and buttresses in the floor construction to mitigate the effects of porpoising

Photo by: Giorgio Piola

At the close of 2022, the Red Bull RB18 was without doubt the class of the field, eclipsing Ferrari’s quick-out-of-the-box F1-75 in the first half of the year and marching into the sunset after the summer break. Although the Milton Keynes squad’s initial iteration was quick, developments were instrumental in turning it into a relentless, dominating force. The key area in yielding performance stemmed from putting the car on a diet, since the launch-spec model was rumoured to be over 10kg overweight.

When the car was a weightier prospect, the handling characteristics tended towards suiting Sergio Perez’s style more than Max Verstappen’s, as the steering was slightly more ponderous. But once the pounds dropped, the front end began to sharpen up to bring the car into Verstappen’s wheelhouse.

On the other end of the spectrum, Alfa Romeo was generally accepted to be the only team to have kept its car to the weight target. So the addition of an extra 3kg to accommodate for the other teams struggling to meet the limit upset the team, although it was able to use some of that extra weight as ballast.

The cost cap meant teams took a different approach to upgrades and grouped their packages together rather than simply opting for a round-by-round piecemeal path. In addition, teams produced parts with more modular designs so that panels could be added and removed

The 3kg extra allowance was largely in response to the teams needing to increase the rigidity of the floors, because flexing at the edges exacerbated the effect of porpoising during the initial tests. Teams employed stays and buttresses in the floor construction [above] to mitigate that effect, which pushed the weight up against their best wishes.

The cost cap meant teams took a different approach to upgrades and grouped their packages together rather than simply opting for a round-by-round piecemeal path. In addition, teams produced parts with more modular designs so that panels could be added and removed rather than making entirely new geometries. Overall, this helped to keep manufacturing costs down, and could also limit repair bills in the case of minor damage.

Sidepod development

With bargeboards banned, sidepods became an important area for development as teams tried to best manage the flow to the rear of the car

Photo by: Giorgio Piola

With bargeboards gone, designers had to box clever to retain some degree of interaction with the airflow from the front end. Much of that came in redefining the sidepod shape to best manage the flow to the rear of the car, and a common design trend prevalent over the past 20 years appeared to be phased out. Although teams such as Aston Martin and Alfa Romeo continued with a standard undercut, as did Red Bull and Mercedes in the opening Barcelona test, others explored a variety of different options.

Haas [above] and Ferrari opted for much squarer sidepod designs that appeared to be a throwback to the 1990s, with the former opting for a crevice in the top surface in which it positioned its cooling louvres. McLaren began with a relatively neutral sidepod design, in which it tried to maximise the ‘Coke-bottle’ region at the rear, while Alpine, Williams and AlphaTauri tended towards the ramped solution that Red Bull enhanced in time for the second Bahrain test.

Here, the RB18 received a new sidepod kit with a more pronounced recess underneath the inlet to control the airflow lower down. The ramped upper surface was also enhanced, with a slight divot in the front third to bleed the flow down across the sides.

A controversial twist in the development stakes was Aston Martin’s own development of that concept for the Spanish Grand Prix, leading to childish ‘Green Red Bull’ jibes from the baying mob. Ahead of the season, Aston Martin’s technical team had opted for a neutral AMR22 to develop in the direction of the prevailing wind, if its own concept was not correct, and that naturally followed as the team went with a similar design to Red Bull. The signing of ex-Red Bull aerodynamicist Dan Fallows led to some putting two and two together and surmising there was some cross-pollination of ideas, but the FIA was satisfied that no copying had taken place.

But the most dramatic change was Mercedes’ development of a ‘zero-pod’ design, where the sidepod inlets were tall and slim to provide the right airflow to the radiators. Rather than use the leading edge of the sidepod to try to work any turbulent air from the front end, Mercedes seemed to be taking it out of the line of fire completely, and instead used the side-impact-structure housing to fit a variety of aerodynamic tools to help manage it.

It was a rich area for development, and Alpine and McLaren were frequently reworking their sidepod designs in their battle for fourth place in the constructors’ standings. McLaren eventually gravitated to the ramped design too after various iterations, and the battling teams ended the year with not dissimilar concepts, with a slight groove in the top surface to hint at Ferrari’s 2022 concept. McLaren also opted to create an underbite in the inlet to pick up from Red Bull’s lead, allowing for an earlier separation of air heading to the inlet and air moving around the front of the sidepod.

Williams also made the switch to a larger ramped sidepod design around the mid-year mark, after starting the campaign with a much more dramatic sidepod slope. The team found that this design, although beneficial for the Coke-bottle region, was a much draggier prospect – and so the switch in design helped the team to strengthen its straightline speed advantage.

A sense of porpoise

Ferrari addressed the design of its floor to ensure the airflow was not producing the dynamic forces that instigated porpoising

Photo by: Giorgio Piola

Since ground-effects-style aero had last been used in F1 four decades ago, there were very few people working in teams at that time who could warn the current designers about the porpoising pitfalls. It could equally have been the case that the teams were aware, assuming there were aerodynamicists with sportscars background, but simulations and windtunnel testing did not reveal the porpoising and bouncing effects until testing began in earnest.

When a select few cars were noticeably oscillating in heave along the Barcelona straight, and continued to do so in Bahrain, it became apparent that porpoising was at least going to dominate the early discourse. Speaking to Autosport in March, ex-F1 aerodynamicist Jean-Claude Migeot explained that teams were severely limited in what they could do outside the windtunnel to fix the issues, especially with the banning of third-element dampers in the front suspension over the winter. He also suggested raising the floor edge height as a quick fix, something the FIA later implemented for 2023 to nip the problem in the bud.

The porpoising effect caught Ferrari by surprise since it was not immediately identified in the windtunnel. Owing to restrictions on windtunnel speeds to 180km/h (110mph), the F1-75 behaved as expected at that speed as it did not phase into oscillations until the car hit 250km/h (155mph). From there, the team had to address the design of its floor [above] to ensure the airflow was not producing the dynamic forces that instigated porpoising.

Floor edges became ripe for development, particularly as the teams started to understand how porpoising was triggered and sought to find ways of finding more performance through a range of rideheights

Mercedes, meanwhile, had designed its W13 machinery with the intention of running the car as low as possible to scoop up the downforce rewards from the ground-effects aero. But as it happened, the car did not react well to that, and was one of the cars most affected by the porpoising motion. So the team sunk a lot of time and resources into its floor developments to try to alleviate its concerns, and was hamstrung in its efforts to bring performance upgrades to the car.

Floor edges also became ripe for development, particularly as the teams started to understand how porpoising was triggered and sought to find ways of finding more performance through a range of rideheights. After all, when the car is in yaw through a high-speed corner, the venturi tunnels at either side are operating at different levels relative to the ground. Here, teams introduced ‘ice-skate’ floor edge designs to allow the cars to run at a lower height and even scrape the ground without creating any disturbance to the underbody flow.

Teams also explored the old tricks of using the floor edge to develop ways of sealing the underbody, with Ferrari among the teams using tools ahead of the diffuser to keep airflow from the tyre in check, but much of the development came underneath and was not particularly visible. The underbody fences and strakes were open for development, and teams sought to use these to further optimise the flow underneath.

Rear wing interpretations

Aston Martin found a novel way to reintroduce an exposed tip by using the radius restrictions to fence off the top of the wing element.

Photo by: Giorgio Piola

Early in the season, the rear wings were not entirely dissimilar to each other, but they were as open to innovation as the rest of the car.

To limit the wake produced by the rear wing, the new rules mandated that the endplates were effectively blended into the wing elements, meaning the exposed tips that may create trailing vortices no longer exist. From a load perspective, however, this limits the amount of downforce that can be produced by the wing. To increase efficiency, Aston Martin found a novel way to reintroduce an exposed tip [above] by using the radius restrictions to fence off the top of the wing element.

It does this by ensuring that the surface curls around to form the wing mainplane, satisfying any rules over minimum radius and surface continuity. Endplates have long been employed in motorsport to increase the effective span of the wing. Although the underside would already have derived some benefit, Aston’s new design could assist the topside and create a stronger pressure differential to produce downforce. Although the team should be credited for exploring that loophole, the design will not be permitted for 2023.

Elsewhere, the return of the beam wing opened up further possibilities for teams to derive more performance out of it. Red Bull, for example, chased efficiency with its design by loading up the inboard part of the wings and tapering the edges to reduce the chord length at the point where the wings meet the endplate. Owing to its top speed advantage – its Honda-designed powertrain proved particularly potent – Red Bull was able to go to tracks like Monza with a higher-downforce rear wing package, giving it more grip in the slower parts of the circuit, while Ferrari was more trimmed out to try to make up the deficit.

Mercedes was stuck with higher-downforce wings early on as its lowest drag concoction was still in development, but by season’s end had a series of customisations to ensure its range of wing levels could fit into intermediate steps. Take Interlagos, where George Russell’s wing was not fitted with the full trailing edge panel that Lewis Hamilton’s car had run, as Hamilton wanted the extra speed advantage.

Front wing workarounds

Mercedes reintroduced some degree of outwashing to improve aerodynamic efficiency further down the car

Photo by: Giorgio Piola

The new rules were particularly restrictive on front wing developments, with four maximum elements allowed and forced to blend in directly to the endplate at a larger radius to eliminate the changes of teams playing with footplates and other vortex generation tools. The endplates were now extended and upturned to resemble the tip of a wing from a modern passenger plane.

Wing designs were generally inboard-loaded compositions with reduced camber levels on the outboard areas to turn airflow outwards

Even with the tighter restrictions, Mercedes found a way of sidestepping those rules and reintroducing some degree of outwashing to improve aerodynamic efficiency further down the car. By sweeping the wing element attachment points further forward as they join the endplate, Mercedes could leave a space at the rear part of the wing [above] to place airflow outwards. This was copied by other teams through their development phases, but will be banned for 2023.

Otherwise, the wing designs were generally inboard-loaded compositions with reduced camber levels on the outboard areas to turn airflow outwards. AlphaTauri had a unique wing early on in which the mainplane swept up to sit level with the top of the nose, but the team ditched this for an arrangement that placed the nose tip lower down [below]. The team stated that this was in a bid to improve the loading on the front wing and flow to the floor, perhaps dissatisfied by the front-end response of the AT03.

AlphaTauri ditched its unique early wing arrangement for an arrangement that placed the nose tip lower down

Photo by: Giorgio Piola