Piola: How new parts will influence 2020 designs

The British Grand Prix was a homecoming for a significant chunk of the current cast of F1 teams, and a convenient location to debut a number of new parts.

As the season winds ever closer to its halfway point, there's still plenty to take stock of and gains to be made for the second half of the year. Assessing the next batch of upgrade packages is key for the engineers back at base, as they look to define their development paths for the remainder of the season.

But there's already teams looking ahead to next season, and with minimal changes to the rules in 2020 means that the engineers are looking at ways to evolve the 2019 packages.

Giorgio Piola's photos and illustrations are, as ever, on hand to guide us through our usual round-up of the weekend's biggest upgrades.

Williams slowly bridges gap to midfield

As reported on Thursday, Williams brought a few new bargeboard accoutrements to add a little more performance to the aerodynamics package. Namely, the principal turning vanes had been reprofiled to produce a stronger transition of airflow around the sidepods, while the wing mirrors were also redesigned.

"It all seemed to be behaving itself," said senior race engineer Dave Robson. "[There's] still a few things to go through but it looks like it's doing what it's supposed to do.

Robson went on to discuss Williams's upgrade path for the rest of the season, which has so far been less ornate compared to the other teams on the grid. Instead, the focus has been understanding the base FW42, although the engineers back at the team's factory have already defined the next steps.

"A lot of the upgrades were already in the pipeline before we went to winter testing. Of course, the car is quite a long way behind where the windtunnel is, and the vast majority of upgrades are aero-based as you'd expect in modern F1. It's just a case of chipping away at that."

After managing his best race finish of the season so far, placing 14th, George Russell confirmed that Williams is making steady progress in turning around its car.

"The car over the last few races has definitely been feeling nicer to drive," explained Russell. "Obviously we're still lacking overall downforce but I hope in the following races we can plonk a bit more of that on."

Although the usual expectation on upgrades is to provide an immediate boost to performance, the stagnant regulations for 2020 means that there's the potential for teams to carry forward the greatest hits from this year's fleet of cars. It's expected that most of next year's grid will primarily consist of evolutionary designs, and Williams will be no different.

"With the rules essentially stable going into 2020, then the car next year - and I'm sure for most people with the rules for '21 - will be an evolution of this one," explained Robson. "For us, we can consider it a two-year design and the evolution over the close-season will allow us to change some of the bigger items on the car that you can't do in-season.

"It's onward progression, so those bits you saw this weekend we make sure they've worked as we hoped and intended. It's quite an important stage and then as we already said going back to the beginning of the season the tunnel's now several months ahead of the car you see, so hopefully more of those bits will appear on the car this season.

"So long as we keep getting good confirmation that the real car behaves like the tunnel [version], when we launch next year's car at the beginning of the year we can hopefully be reasonably confident that we've made some big steps, some good steps and they will appear on the real car."

Racing Point clips new wings

Turning up with a somewhat unconventional approach to the front wing footplate, or distinct lack thereof towards the trailing edge, Racing Point appeared to look at the merits of releasing the developed vortex sooner around the front wheel assembly.

Airflow rotation develops at the front corner of the footplate, and then becomes shaped by the curvature of the footplate. Since that curvature is rather tightly regulated by the front wing rules, teams have to employ creative means to eke out that extra degree of performance.

However, it only seemed like an experimental step for Racing Point. After very little running in the opening practice session it was not used again, but checking its effect within the real world gives the engineers enough data to assess whether it worked, and whether it's worth persisting with.

Ferrari brings back the onesie

It was only a few years back that it seemed like everyone owned a onesie. Despite their comfort, perhaps the adult babygro aesthetic lacked the sartorial elegance that today's not-so-activewear currently provides.

Regardless, Ferrari has made the decision to opt for a one-piece engine cover, reducing the melange of panels usually seen at the rear of the car. It's not just done for coquettish fancy, but instead aims to tighten up the bodywork at the rear of the car and improves the airflow quality in that area atop the diffuser.

In Piola's illustration, the inset image shows the multi-piece bodywork to the rear of the car seen so far this season, and the revised construction for Silverstone below.

It's an area of the car Ferrari has made numerous changes to over the course of the season, and the team seems finally to be embarking on a Mercedes-like upgrade path based on continual development.

Red Bull gives you fins

As if Red Bull's front-face sidepod undercut wasn't dramatic enough, the team has bolstered the floor area next to it with a quartet of fins to further direct the airflow passing underneath the inlet.

They all display dramatic degrees of curvature, where the bottom and top edge both respectively seem to be doing different things. Any air moving immediately along the floor's top surface is directed outwards through the slot, which can assist with sealing the floor's edges to better control the airflow moving towards the diffuser.

Presumably, the air at a slightly greater height is to be either fired at the curled section of the floor (which the two fins at the front appear to do) or around the sidepod, which appears to be the job of the rearmost fins.

Red Bull has, at the very least, closed the door to Ferrari - although Verstappen's on-track attempts to close the door to Vettel rather nixed the team's chance at a podium. Gasly's fourth place finish was ultimately a small crumb of comfort, as the Frenchman enjoyed a much-improved weekend to match his best F1 finishing position.