The technical battlegrounds of F1 2023

Imbued with a year’s experience of Formula 1’s ground-effect revival, most teams would be forgiven for expecting greater convergence throughout the field in 2023. And, largely, that maxim was true.

Four teams ultimately battled to be the second-best on the grid, with Ferrari and Mercedes joined in the melee for podium finishes by a much-improved Aston Martin and a resurgent McLaren. There was also a four-team battle for seventh in the constructors’ championship as Williams found form, AlphaTauri turned around a dismal start, and both Alfa Romeo and Haas found points-scoring opportunities harder to come by.

Red Bull, however, bucked that trend. The fine lines between the teams behind in the performance stakes ensured that Max Verstappen could breeze to the 2023 title uncontested, and Red Bull claimed 21 of 22 victories. With the RB19 proving the most potent weapon in this year’s arsenal, its successes will undoubtedly inspire next year’s designs to a fuller extent and many of its visual hallmarks made their way onto the majority of the 2023 field over the season.

A varied approach to sidepod design, which has been inextricably linked to the performance of the floor, had converged by mid-2023 towards the downwashing arrangement used to great effect by Red Bull. Much like in 2003, when most of the F1 field arrived at the Melbourne opener with cars heavily inspired by the all-conquering Ferrari F2002, you can expect a field of Red Bull facsimiles – all with their own twists as the other teams seek to improve their fortunes next year.

Beyond floor and sidepod ‘concepts’, suspension design was also a fruitful vein to tap into because the ground-effect rules have made the floor the most significant aerodynamic device on the car. Developing a suspension package that can allow the floor to perform at its optimum is therefore hugely important, and this was another area where Red Bull found great strides over the competition. Last year’s early mantra had been to run the car as low as possible, but Red Bull found a way to generate huge amounts of downforce without having to scrape the floor through the high-speed corners.

F1’s cost-cap regulations have continued to enforce a more strategic approach to bringing upgrades over the season. Although many teams have found that huge strides can be made despite the need for financial prudence, others have had to pass on bringing developments if the gains found in their simulations were not enough to justify the cost. Most of the teams elected to wrap their upgrades into one big bundle, rather than take a piecemeal approach over the year.

Here’s a look at the key technical battlegrounds over the season, and how teams approached their development paths over 2023 – carefully illustrated by F1’s master of penmanship Giorgio Piola.

How Red Bull improved upon excellence

Photo by: Giorgio Piola

Making the RB19 lighter and perfecting some design areas elevated it beyond Red Bull's dominant 2022 car

The English language is running out of superlatives to describe the RB19, such was its success over 2023. Perhaps most damning of all was that Red Bull paused its development early owing to its aerodynamic testing penalty for transgressing the 2021 cost-cap rules, and instead pinned its focus upon next year’s RB20.

Red Bull already had a strong base to work from with the 2022 title-winning RB18, and a series of known weaknesses that it could improve upon. A drop in weight proved to be low-hanging fruit that it could easily deal with, and it opted for a slightly longer wheelbase [1] to improve stability.

Despite the early focus on 2024, Red Bull did not stop perfecting an already near-perfect design. It had already begun the year with a much more complex floor than in 2022, with a visual difference in the edge that included a series of cascading winglets and a slot braced by four brackets to help seal the floor [2], which received further updates for the Asian leg of the calendar [3].

Continuing with a similar sidepod concept to last year, Red Bull honed this with a more distinctive undercut for the launch-spec car, and updated its solution for April’s Baku round with a wider, shorter inlet to expand on it.

One of Red Bull’s strengths in 2023 was in its straightline performance, particularly when it came to DRS use. By employing a single beam-wing element at certain circuits, the activation of the DRS flap could dump more drag, which encouraged Max Verstappen’s drives through the order at Jeddah and Spa.

But it also borrowed a few design cues from others, becoming one team to opt for the detached-tip rear wing on the high-downforce circuits. Long-radius and high-downforce corners were a distinct RB19 strength, as it compromised on the shorter, slower corners, so Singapore was the only venue it did not win at in 2023.

The battle for second: Mercedes vs Ferrari

Photo by: Giorgio Piola

Mercedes ditched its 'zero-pod' design with a raft of upgrades that arrived at Monaco

Mercedes prevailed in the battle for second in the constructors’ championship after its duel with Ferrari went down to the wire in Abu Dhabi, although the bounce that it had enjoyed after scrapping its ‘zero-pod’ sidepod solution had long since subsided. Instead, Ferrari had been the stronger of the two teams in the second half of the year after ditching its own unique sidepod solution.

At launch, the Mercedes W14 featured a revised version of its predecessor’s distinctively slim sidepods with a squarer inlet, but hopes of building on its sole 2022 race win did not emerge in the early rounds. Perhaps sensing this, the Brackley squad dropped its unique design and shifted to a more conventional downwashing solution [1] for Monaco. This was accompanied by a revised front wishbone design, where the front leg’s attachment point to the chassis was moved upwards as it aimed to instil further anti-dive qualities into the car.

The floor was updated to link up with the change in pressure field around the sidepods, a front wing update emerging [2] for Silverstone with a new, curved endplate to assist with outwash production. A new, curved mainplane was merged into this to assist with that direction and enhance the effect of the two downturned fins affixed to the rear portion of the endplate.

Mercedes improved the sidepod solution with a new inlet with greater curvature, which also led to changes to the upper fairing that encloses the side impact structure [3]. This was augmented prior to the summer break with a new rear wing, which followed the lead of many other teams with a partial detachment of the upper wing plane. The aerodynamicists could thus ensure it produced a vortex to strengthen the lower suction surface of the wing [4]. Despite the improving fortunes of the car, Mercedes is set to opt for an entirely new concept for 2024 as it seeks to return to race-winning form.

Photo by: Giorgio Piola

Ferrari developed well throughout the season but could not fully solve its high tyre wear trouble

As Mercedes’ upgrades slowed down, Ferrari was able to start putting pressure on the team over the second half of the year. Early efforts to snuff out drag in a bid to challenge Red Bull on the straights were fulfilled with a single-mount rear wing [5] grafted into the DRS housing, although the team returned to the dual-pillar design to help Charles Leclerc bag pole in Baku in April.

While strong in qualifying, Ferrari struggled to replicate that form in the races, where it proved to be hard on the tyres, and a Miami floor change [6] sought to address that. But the bigger-ticket item arrived for Barcelona, where Ferrari dropped its bathtub sidepods for a downwashing design. This featured a smaller groove in the upper surface, since the internal infrastructure could not be so easily changed, so the design was something of a compromise [7].

The start of Ferrari’s post-summer turnaround emerged at Monza when Carlos Sainz gave his utmost in defending the lead from the Red Bull pair, helped by a shallow rear wing [8] to defend on the straights. Following the Spaniard’s win in Singapore, Ferrari upped the ante with a new floor [9] for Suzuka, helping it beat Mercedes to draw closer in the championship stakes.

Much of Ferrari’s second-half success emerged as it unlocked more potential from set-up choices, which initially swung the pendulum in Sainz’s favour before further tweaks gave Leclerc more confidence towards the end of the season. This inspired the Monegasque’s impressive form in Las Vegas and Abu Dhabi.

Although Ferrari has work to do to catch Red Bull, Sainz noted that there were traits that he’d like the team to keep, suggesting that it should retain “the straightline speed, the braking performance and the performance in 90-degree, short duration corners. The kerb riding I think is a very strong point.”

McLaren’s zero-to-hero rise

Photo by: Giorgio Piola

McLaren's mid-season updates created one of the biggest development turnarounds in years

McLaren had not been particularly pleased with its launch version of the MCL60, although team boss Andrea Stella was keen to point out that the arrival of mid-season upgrades would help turn the tide.

A small upgrade to the floor in Baku in April was the first among the bunch; this was not going to offer a huge surge in performance itself, but rather to inform the next series of updates planned for the season. This tweaked floor [1] had visible changes to the edge, deleting the slotted element and replacing it with an exposed winglet to assist with sealing the underbody.

McLaren had garnered a handful of points in the opening rounds, but its season improved drastically with its large update package for the Austrian GP in July. A redesigned engine cover [2] featured a repositioning of the cooling fins and a tighter ‘Coke-bottle’ section, along with new sidepods with a shorter intake to increase the size of the undercut and include a waterslide-like groove in the upper surface [3] and another new floor. These were added to Lando Norris’s car for the Red Bull Ring, increasing the performance significantly, and Norris finished fourth.

This extended to the detail areas of the car, with fins added to the trailing edge of the halo to improve the flow emerging from the safety device.

Both cars received the updates for Silverstone, although Norris had a new front wing added to his car to magnify its outwashing capabilities. The new package allowed both McLarens to fight at the front for the first time in 2023 and had dialled in much in the way of missing downforce, although Norris felt that the car still required a very specific approach to drive it successfully.

The team continued to ring the changes throughout the year, opting for an exposed-tip rear wing for Zandvoort [4] to boost the performance of the car in lower-speed environments. At the same time, the beam wing was reduced to a single-element design to help DRS activations become more powerful.

The edge wing removed for the Baku round was introduced back into the floor for the Singapore race and beyond, because the engineers had found a way to extract more performance from it with the new upgrades.

There were still inherent issues in the car; it was already down on straightline performance in Baku, and the updates did not tangibly reduce any aerodynamic inefficiencies – November’s Las Vegas event proved to be a difficult round. Stella explained that the team’s data had hinted that the updates could have also introduced handling difficulties, but was keen to point out that this was a hypothesis among the team. Nonetheless, McLaren had significantly improved its fortunes throughout the year, and produced a baseline for 2024 that it hopes will allow for a championship challenge.

Aston Martin rises and falls, Alpine flatlines

Photo by: Giorgio Piola

The AMR23 started 2023 as the second-quickest car but Aston Martin went astray on its development path

A surprise contender for second in the championship early in the season, Aston Martin fell back over time as Mercedes, Ferrari and McLaren all improved more over the course of 2023. There were notable influences from Red Bull in the AMR23, although with the team’s own twist on them to create a package that was strong in high-downforce conditions. The sidepods had a distinctive ramp at launch [5] that could channel air to the rear of the car more cleanly, a design that was refined among a series of upgrades for Montreal in June along with detail changes to the floor.

One of the Silverstone squad’s more interesting design features included a small tail-like element to the rear crash structure [6], which it hoped could help augment the flow emerging from the diffuser. Although Aston built a special rear jack to ensure this fin did not break, it proved problematic and was later discarded. High levels of experimentation with the car emerged in the latter end of the season, and a new floor [7] was introduced for the Mexican GP as the team sought to test ideas for 2024.

Photo by: Giorgio Piola

Alpine wasn't able to find the same development rate like rivals McLaren and Aston Martin

In the meantime, Alpine had a lonely run to sixth in the championship standings. The Renault-owned team had undergone a management overhaul amid stagnation in terms of results, although there was a clutch of updates over the year as the team looked to consolidate its position. A focus around its rear wing came with an adoption of the semi-detached upper plane [8] used by other teams, and a clever interpretation of bounding boxes allowed the team to graft a ‘monkey seat’ onto the rear wing mount [9].

For the high-downforce Hungaroring, a waved trailing edge was implemented on its front wing to allow the wing to operate at higher angles of attack; producing a curved edge can help reduce noise present in the wing and eliminate sources of stall [10]. This was trimmed back considerably for the lower downforce circuits such as Spa [11].

…and the rest

Of the teams battling over seventh in the championship, Williams eventually won out with a car that was not only quick in a straight line, but also handy around the slower circuits such as Zandvoort when weather conditions aligned. By the end of the season AlphaTauri had become the British squad’s sternest challenger in the championship stakes, after introducing an ambitious upgrade schedule.

Photo by: Giorgio Piola

AlphaTauri made decent progress over the final few rounds while both Alfa Romeo and Haas struggled to keep up with the pack

This started to bear fruit towards the end of the year, especially with changes to the sidepods to incorporate a waterslide-type element [12] introduced for Singapore, and a new floor in Abu Dhabi featuring a revised front fence and slot along the edge [13]. The car was initially difficult to handle on corner entry, but these changes ensured that the AT04 had become one of the stronger packages in low-speed conditions.

Alfa Romeo did not enjoy the levels of success it had achieved in 2022, with an inefficient car proving to be a persistent problem as it was lumbered with excess levels of drag. The team experimented with different nose options to set up the airflow passing rearwards, opting for the extruded tip version early in the year [14], while also reworking its rear wing throughout the season to shift some of the drag.

Haas was hampered by a car that was poor on its tyres, and efforts to remedy the issue ultimately came to nothing despite pouring its resources into a comprehensive update for Austin in October. This featured a new engine cover and sidepods [15], but it proved to matter little and the car remained unsuccessful in race trim, despite some impressive qualifying showings.

Photo by: Alfa Romeo

Can any of the teams in the lower reaches pull off a McLaren-like transformation this winter?