How teams will approach their Baku F1 upgrade paths

The 2.2-kilometre stretch along Neftchilar Avenue, overlooking the Caspian Sea, rather sets the cat among the pigeons when it comes to devising the best set-up for the Baku City Circuit.

The usual convention for years on a street track was, owing to a plethora of 90-degree corners and the need for pinpoint handling control between concrete walls, to bolt on the biggest wings available. After all, low speeds equal lower downforce, so in the equation for lift force (expressed as a negative to define downforce) other variables must be increased to compensate.

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Since coefficient of lift and wing area are the most easily adjustable, sticking on the big wings has been a tried and tested solution. Increasing air density, the other variable, is a touch more difficult - unless the FIA approved that street races could be run in a vat of treacle. But that would only create further problems...

Most traditional street circuits fit that mould: Monaco is naturally the accompanying mental image when one considers a street race, but the likes of Adelaide, Phoenix, and Singapore have all required a similar approach even with varying sizes of long straights. Stripping off downforce for one longer acceleration zone rarely benefits the car over the rest of the track.

But Baku rather changed the game for an F1 street circuit. That 2200m-plus section on full throttle forms so much of the circuit that it cannot be ignored. The following 900m straight, two corners later, rather underlines the notion that straightline speed must factor. Much of the course is a compromise between low-speed downforce for the old-town sector – including the punishing Turns 8-9-10 – and rattling the top of the rev counter by the braking zone for Turn 1.

In past editions of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, there have been different wing compositions to try and do both – or at least, split the two differing track characteristics down the middle. Teams won’t run their Monaco-spec wing, but also won’t go all-in on the straight and run the Monza-style wing either. It’s a balancing act; there will have to be some sacrifice on the straight and some in the corners – and it’s down to the teams’ in-house simulations to determine which is the best route forward.

Many of the teams have experimented with a spoon-shaped rear wing, for example, with the biggest area of camber positioned in the middle and shallows out towards the endplates. Downforce production over a wing is not uniform, and the largest area of load sits in the centre, so it makes sense to trim back the least effective part of the wing to develop something more efficient. Ferrari and Red Bull did that, effectively running lower-camber versions of their full-downforce wings to straddle the demands of Baku.

Mercedes went in the opposite direction of its rivals last year in Baku with rear wing set-up

Photo by: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images

Mercedes took a different approach and went for a straight-plane rear wing; having suffered with drag in its W13, the team took a slightly shallower wing than some of its rivals to try and address the difference. Lewis Hamilton and George Russell were still propping up the speed trap, but they at least remained tangential to the ballpark everyone else was running in.

Approaches for 2023 will likely be similar, but there won’t be the process of seeing how much the teams can get away with trimming the wing back and finding the limits. This year’s edition of proceedings in Baku will feature the first sprint race event of the year, and it’s looking set to feature a mix-up of the schedule. If all goes as expected, there will be a sole practice session all weekend before qualifying on Friday, with Saturday completely dedicated to the sprint, so there will be few opportunities to conduct any back-to-back tests.

The nature of Baku will also dissuade engineers from sticking new bits on, as there’s a very real chance that the proximity of the walls could nibble away at any parts limited on spares. Sure, a handful of updates across the pitlane are surely planned given the month’s hiatus between races, but risk and reward must be balanced.

Nonetheless, McLaren is still going all guns blazing on its Baku-scheduled update. Thus, most eyes will be on the orange-tinged pit garage when it unveils the MCL60 in practice, and team principal Andrea Stella says that the upgrade path has two further stages that the team hopes will provide “a few tenths” each as the Woking squad tries to arrest a difficult start to the year.

“The improvement in Baku should affect an area of the car that has been clear, I think, from the presentation of the car we weren't entirely happy with in terms of development,” Stella said. “It is just the first step. We would expect definitely another major upgrade, which will affect more areas of the car, it will be much more apparent.

A race spent plodding along with no updates while other teams ring the changes is a wasted opportunity. It could even have longer term ramifications as those who pursue updates could benefit from a whole grand prix weekend’s worth of data

“That is what somebody may call kind of a B-spec car. And then we expect to have a further round of upgrades in the second part of the season after the shutdown, so we have three main steps back – we cannot to commit to any date, but before shutdown, and then after shutdown. And we hope that each of them will be able to provide a few tenths of a second so that, you know, we put ourselves in a more realistic position to meet our ambition to become a top-four car towards the end of the season.”

Alpine will have a new floor for Baku too, as it pushes its own aspirations to challenge the current quartet of teams at the front of the grid. But there’s limited time for both teams to fully explore the capabilities of each package; if there’s an immediate uptick in performance, then the upgrades are worth bolting on – but there’s a chance that they only deliver the goods following three practice sessions’ worth of tinkering.

Alpine will have a new floor to try in Azerbaijan

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

Although the expected changes in sprint race format probably come at the least convenient time for the designers and engineers back at base, particularly off the back of a break spanning the length of a summer break without the shutdown demands, everyone has been dealt the same hand here. But even limited testing isn’t going to stop some of the engineers packing up new parts and shipping them off to Baku.

After all, a race spent plodding along with no updates while other teams ring the changes is a wasted opportunity. It could even have longer term ramifications as those who pursue updates could benefit from a whole grand prix weekend’s worth of data, leaving anyone approaching Baku too cautiously with a greater task on its hands to catch up.

In other words: it’s a gamble to bring updates to Baku, particularly this season, but it’s equally risky to do nothing.

Baku updates will be a necessary risk for all teams moving into the next part of the season

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