The pitfalls and vocabulary to be aware of during 2025's F1 launch season

There's just over a month until 20 Formula 1 cars roar through Melbourne's green and pleasant Albert Park to kick off the 2025 festivities. In that time, the winter hibernation state that has pervaded throughout January will start to ease; that's not to say the teams haven't been hard at work, but all of their efforts have been expended behind closed doors.

We'll get to see the fruit of that labour this month. You'll get F1's 75th anniversary event from London's O2 Arena with fresh liveries on old machinery, then pre-season testing at Bahrain where the real cars will be unboxed and sent on track to clock in the miles and gather data for Australia's season opener in mid-March. But that's not all, we'll also get individual team launches where we'll - hopefully! - get a look at the all-new cars set to tackle this year's championship.

Nothing's ever quite that simple, however. Launch season is chock-full of carefully curated instances of misdirection, or Easter eggs thrown in to the (usually 3D rendered) design by an engineer with a mischievous streak. Teams don't really want to show their full hand, especially their best innovations, because it ensures that a rival squad can have a CAD model made in a matter of hours to see how it works.

Alternatively, they might play with the viewer's keen gaze with the released imagery. Remember how Red Bull deliberately obfuscated its sidepod design when it launched its RB20 last year, possibly with the use of Photoshop's burn tool to darken the inlet area enough to keep it hidden. Alternatively, there was Alfa Romeo's 2023 launch of its C43, complete with a serrated floor edge that ultimately proved to be a decoy when the car was properly pushed out of the garage for the first time.

And it's not a modern thing either; Red Bull's 2010 RB6 was first seen with a sticker mimicking an exhaust outlet between its rear suspension elements to divert attention away from its real position lower down as it capitalised on the then-fashionable blown diffuser. It's not a dissimilar practice to when automotive companies test their new machinery in full dazzle camo and with extra bodywork tacked on to throw off the scent to rival manufacturers.

Being able to tell the difference between fact and fiction is impossible until the cars are demonstrated at the Bahrain test, and so one walks a precarious tightrope in trusting what the teams put out in good faith. In any case, we'll attempt to decode the usual language of launch season and explain what it means for you, the reader. Here's a little glossary of terms that you may encounter in this festive period.

Aggressive does not always refer to the look of a car, it can be more abstract

Photo by: Rainer W. Schlegelmilch / Motorsport Images

Aggressive: This can refer to two things - aesthetics, or general approach. If said by a pundit, this is likely in deference to how a car looks - does it have an angular quality, or show something different to the norm? Is there an odd-looking wing somewhere on the car? Does it have a big shark on it? In any of those cases, it's aggressive. A team can also declare its own car aggressive if it has deliberately chased lofty performance targets by taking minimal compromises. Example: "It's an aggressive design from the team", or "We've been aggressive with our targets and believe we've hit them all."

Clean sheet of paper: This is when last year's car didn't work so well, and the team starts from scratch to design and develop a new one. There might have been some characteristics in the old car that couldn't be smoothed out, or simply no further room to improve the old one - so starting afresh sometimes is the best course of action. Example: "Since the previous car would not have been out of place in a scrapyard, the new machine is a clean sheet of paper design."

Concept: A vague term, either used to indicate a defining visual trait or if a car fits within a certain school of thought. For example, one might use "Red Bull-style concept" to say "this car looks similar to a Red Bull", or "Mercedes' zeropod concept" to say "this car has slightly different sidepods". You can get away with saying quite a lot by appending 'concept' to it.

Conservative: With a small "c". When a car looks like the F1 equivalent of an Average Joe Shmoe, with no real defining features or characteristics other than its genericness. Likely to be the result of an evolutionary design process that didn't go far enough, or a new team's car that was built for the express purpose of being modestly competitive and for data gathering. Like aggressive, usually just a term thrown at a car on pure vibes alone.

Failing to pass a crash test is never a good sign at this time of year

Crash tests: Usually accompanied by "passed" or "failed". All teams must make their cars sufficiently strong and include what the auto industry terms as 'crashworthiness' - effectively, with impact and anti-intrusion panels to protect the drivers. All new cars must pass the tests to receive homologation from the FIA. Failed crash tests usually relate to aerodynamicists being too aggressive and attempting to push through a design that's not strong enough.

Digital launch: When a team can't bear to part with money on planning and executing a launch event, so instead chooses to either simply release the images online or launch the car without any attendees. This might come with a video of the car's unveiling, interviews, awkward chatter about "looking forward to testing the car", and then a package of images sent to media outlets.

Envelope: Usually spoken about in relation to a car's performance. At launch, an aerodynamicist may speak of wanting to "widen the operating envelope", ie. ensuring that a car works well everywhere and not just in specific circumstances. Sometimes used interchangeably with "operating window", although window also preferred to indicate tyre condition.

Evolution: See clean sheet of paper, but the opposite. A design process that involves taking the previous year's car and subjecting it to a lengthy process of embetterification. The car may end up looking different to its forebear, but it ultimately has the same 'DNA'. Can often be paired with conservative if it's a minor evolution of the old car.

Inlets and outlets: Bits where air goes into the car and out again. Designers are forever changing the shape of them to get the maximum of air through the car at all times, as long as it's no more than the powertrain needs to operate at its best. Sidepod inlets will likely be a focal point, as teams may consider copying McLaren/Red Bull with its "overbite inlets" (where the top of the inlet sits further forward than the bottom part) or sticking with the "underbite" (vice versa) for 2025. Outlets can appear at the rear of the car, or through the bodywork (these are known as louvres, cooling slots, or speedholes) and are also carefully controlled by aerodynamicists to limit drag.

Last year's Aston Martin is a good example of a car with limited potential as upgrades didn't yield gains

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

Potential: A car is never the finished product, and both drivers and designers alike will wax about a new car's potential - in essence, how much room it has to develop. If a team continues to find performance gains with new parts, then a car is delivering on that perceived potential (see McLaren's MCL38), but if a car 'refuses' to grow with updates (see Aston Martin's AMR24, or Windows 11) then it either has no potential, or it hasn't been unearthed. An allegory for life, one could suggest.

Push-rod/pull-rod suspension: This is something that has been discussed a lot of late - essentially, it's simply a term showing the inclination that connects the torsion bar or springs to the wheel assembly. If this rod goes from the bottom of the wheel hub to the top of the chassis, this is a push-rod; if it goes vice versa, it's a pull-rod. Push and pull indicate the rod's action on the springs when the wheel rises in relation to the road, either pushing on the torsion bar or pulling upon it. Historically, teams have opted for a push-rod front suspension arrangement and a pull-rod rear, but the packaging requirements of the current-era cars have encouraged many teams to swap them. In terms of performance, any preference is usually due to aerodynamic or weight-saving reasons, although vehicle dynamicists might have further reasons to pursue a certain path.

Renders: Instead of photographs of a real car, a team might decide to take the CAD model of its latest challenger and stick a livery on it. These are known as renders, as the images have to go through a rendering process to upscale the model and its associated scenery. They look very close to real images with modern technology, although the clue is usually in the naked carbon patterns on the car - real carbon lay-ups look a little bit more patchwork-y than continuous weaves that remain perfectly flush. Saves even more money when paired with a digital launch.

Renault's 2020 'launch' still irks for its lack of substance

Season launch: One thing that shouldn't happen this season thanks to the F1 75 event: teams pencilling in their unveiling dates with the "season launch" billing. Anything termed as a season launch should come with a disclaimer on the packaging of "may not contain traces of new car", as it's simply a livery reveal and the usual marketing spiel dressed up in an event. Renault's version of this in 2020 was the most heinous, so heinous in fact that this writer is still bemoaning it today. This didn't even include a livery launch - just four low-resolution rendered images of bits of car. A hateful practice - launch a car, or launch nothing.

Shakedown: The first run of a new car, mainly for the purposes of systems checking and ensuring nothing is immediately wrong. Usually restricted to about 100km, if paired with a filming day. If something does go wrong here, that's usually very bad.

Undercut: The groove underneath the sidepod inlet. Air flow can lose energy by traversing a longer path, so minimising that path can keep it flowing and minimise the effect of stalling. Arguably first entered the F1 lexicon in 1992 when the twin-floor F92A was spawned, but actually became popular in 2003 when Ferrari's F2003-GA arrived with sculpted sidepods. Since then, undercuts have become increasingly cavernous.

Wind tunnel: A big tunnel with a giant fan in it. This is what teams use to test a car's aerodynamics and hope that the results correlate to those seen in CFD (computational fluid dynamics) simulations. Many predicted that nobody would be using wind tunnels in 2025 - and yet, here we are, with F1's biggest teams all building new ones.

Some thought wind tunnels may be obsolete by now, but they're just as important as ever

Photo by: McLaren