How the key tech contests of F1 2024 are shaping up

There’s always an element of secrecy and gamesmanship in Formula 1’s launch season. Teams are keen to only show the car in a state that doesn’t give up their development secrets, although it’s inevitable that these will be revealed when pre-season testing begins. But, if nothing else, the mystery at least delays the point at which other teams can analyse a solution and implement it into their own simulations.

As the covers were taken off, the ‘proper’ 2024 cars finally burst onto the scene last week in Bahrain. A handful of teams had already revealed key features in their shakedown runs but, thanks to that earlier secrecy amid the launches, there were lots of new technological advancements to dissect. Now that F1 reaches its third season with the 2022-defined ruleset, the wealth of talented designers across the field are starting to get a handle on how to exploit the letter of the law but perhaps sidestep the intent of the regulations.  

With pre-season testing as short as ever, teams don’t entirely have the liberty to trial completely different specifications, so it’s likely that 99% of what was seen in testing will translate into their respective Bahrain Grand Prix configurations. Ensuring that the car remained reliable over the three days of testing was hence of paramount importance, allowing the engineers to collect reams of data throughout and start decoding it in preparation for the following week. 

PLUS: Ranking the F1 teams on 2024 pre-season testing form

What was new in terms of technological tweaks ahead of the new season? Let’s assess the most interesting points of development over the winter. 

Red Bull’s inlets finally revealed 

Red Bull's inlet was seen for the first time in Bahrain testing

Photo by: Giorgio Piola

At the launch of its RB20, Red Bull avoided its recent tactic of pushing out an old car in a new livery and instead chose to demonstrate a representative model. The caveat was that the team had taken great pains to keep its sidepod inlets hidden from view, either through lighting at its launch or liberal use of the burn tool in Photoshop. But there’s no hiding once testing begins, and the RB20’s full form had to emerge from the shadows at some point. 

After pioneering the underbite inlet arrangement, Red Bull switched to an overbitten leading edge to the sidepods with a short, wide inlet recessed into the undercut like a letterbox. Underneath, two vertical slots are fed by the flanks of the chassis, not dissimilar to the positioning of the inlets on Mercedes’ initial-spec W14.  

There’s a further set of inlets either side of the central airbox, using the bulkier engine cover and its blend into the halo to house two openings. This is used to cool further elements of the powertrain, although the main radiators remain in their usual inclined position within the sidepods.  

Within these cannon-like shoulders, Red Bull has positioned outlets to release heat on the outside, but has also trialled further cooling panels within the channel between the shoulders and the airbox. This has been shaped at the trailing edge to influence the airflow towards the rear wing.

The packaging of the RB20 has benefited from moving cooling components further up to enhance the undercut. The radiator is positioned almost horizontally, but with a slight incline to fit in with the downwash characteristic of the aerodynamics. With this tight packaging, rumours of a potential revision to the sidepods would require a change in the overall infrastructure to be realised. 

Red Bull had also kept its floor hidden at the launch, but it retains a similar form to that seen on the RB19; a series of flick-ups appear along the edge ahead of a slot. This should all ensure that the underbody airflow is not allowed to bleed out, while keeping any ambient, unaccelerated air from leaking into the venturi tunnels.   

The team also made a small change to its front wing on the final day of testing, swapping the panel at the nose tip for one with a small inlet, after earlier shifting the wing flap adjusters inboard to assist with producing an outwashing effect.   

Mercedes’ adjustable suspension 

Mercedes has developed a canny trick to adjust its front suspension

Photo by: Giorgio Piola

Because the development of a suspension layout is so entrenched within the chassis design, it’s very difficult to implement geometry changes without either hacking away at the monocoque or building an entirely new one. Hence it comes as some surprise that Mercedes has been able to produce two differing suspension layouts for its W15, where it could move the rear leg of its upper wishbone between two positions along the chassis. This leg either sat just below the AMG logo on the flanks, or was moved down towards the lower wishbone.

In doing this, Mercedes can explore two things: firstly, the aerodynamic flow around this area assisted by the suspension elements’ shrouding; and secondly, any improvement in anti-dive properties that can enhance the effectiveness of the floor. The latter has been an important development with the current generation of cars, since maintaining a stable platform for the venturi tunnels to work is imperative to produce the right amount of downforce in the corners. Motion like pitch and roll can create an imbalance in the underbody flow, so mitigating that is a crucial component of drawing performance from the floor.  

Whether Mercedes chooses to retain the adjustability remains to be seen, and it could be merely a back-to-back test to determine which direction to stick with permanently. Regardless, having that level of modularity with the suspension design is somewhat rare, but it’s not the only area where Mercedes has innovated for 2024. 

The team has developed a new front wing that makes use of a tiny piece of carbon fibre to satisfy the four-element rule between the endplate and nose. This fits between the nose and the adjustable flap bracket and will have a negligible effect on downforce overall, but it allows the ‘real’ upper flap to be very slightly detached from it and make use of an exposed tip to generate greater vorticity. Here’s the clever bit: the tip lines up with the flap bracket to ensure it operates at the maximum allowed gap between the split in the top two elements.  

While it’s a smart bit of design, it clashes with the philosophy of shaping the rules to improve the on-track action. F1’s chief technical officer Pat Symonds questioned on F1 TV: “It’s within the regulations, there’s absolutely no doubt about it. But is it the sort of thing we want? I think we need to know how strong is the effect.”

Teams make strides with front wing design 

After bringing up the rear in 2023, Haas has gone for an eye-catching front wing

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

Mercedes has not been the only team to experiment with its front wing geometry for 2024, with teams taking more liberties within the letter of the regulations to produce more favourable flow patterns at the front end. The Haas front wing has been surprisingly eye-catching, taking the effort to play with the attachment points between the wing elements and the endplate. The wing elements have exposed trailing edges, all firing airflow outwards, while the rearmost flap has a tiny winglet attached to it.

This was something that a number of teams explored last year, but Haas has put a little endplate on it to build vorticity and strengthen the airflow’s path outwards around the front tyre. The RB wing has two small winglets situated at the trailing edge of its front wing endplate, both with the hope of capturing a similar effect. Sauber has not directly used an additional winglet on the endplate to manage flow like this, but has turned the bottom corner inwards to produce a similar vortex in this area.  

Red Bull’s front wing opts for something slightly different, where its upper element’s trailing edge passes beyond the endplate, attaching to it with a sweep forward into a right angle. This leaves an exposed corner on the wing, which appears to be its own method of generating some kind of vorticity. This is not entirely dissimilar to Mercedes’ solution back in 2019 where it also featured an upper wing element that protruded from the endplate, although it was forced by the FIA to scale this back when it was ruled to be outside a rule where 95% of the front wing had to be obscured by the endplate when viewed side-on. 

The different approaches on the outboard diveplane are also intriguing, and Haas again has opted for an interesting approach with two concave sweeps upward. These are used to generate a little bit of downforce to help balance the front end, and produce some degree of direction away from the front wheels. Ferrari, in the meantime, has opted for a conventional upward sweep but has angled the outer edge downwards to perhaps control the vortex generated here, much like teams used to produce with a footplate under the old regulations. 

Despite the restrictive nature of the current ruleset, teams are finding ways to skirt this while maintaining legality to improve their aerodynamic packages.

McLaren’s key details unveiled 

McLaren's MCL38 sports a middle wing to direct airflow

Photo by: Giorgio Piola

Like Red Bull, McLaren has strayed away from the underbite sidepod inlet structure for 2024, and has introduced a wing section ahead of the apertures to which the mirrors are mounted. This is not dissimilar to the sidepod inlet treatments that many opted for prior to the introduction of the current rules in 2022, so it’s another situation where old design solutions are beginning to creep back into the modern formula. With this, McLaren can have more control over the airflow that reaches the sidepods, and offers a chance to help condition any wake from the tyres that may migrate towards this area of the car.

During its launch, McLaren had also kept its floor concealed, but images from testing detail the first iteration of its edge on the MCL38. This features a slot along the rear two-thirds, with a raised lip towards the front. This houses two fins, which can produce vortices to help keep the underbody sealed.  

In its aggressive upgrade strategy last year, McLaren had worried that some of its updates had exacerbated an issue with waywardness at the rear end. With the new car, team principal Andrea Stella reckons that most of these issues have been cured, but says that there is room for further development across the season.

“We are I would say happier with the grip at the rear axle, which was one of the aspects that we wanted to work on,” the Italian explained. “Overall there is more grip in the car. There are some aspects that we still have some work to improve, save the fact that the major performance opportunity remains overall grip.

“It’s not like you need to correct features, you just have to put more grip on the car, which mainly comes from aerodynamic performance. But we have some more margin to improve.”

Which team will have made a decisive gain when the season begins in anger on Thursday?

Photo by: Erik Junius