Your F1 tech questions answered

What single development item do you think made the most difference to a team's performance in 2015?
Dan Sainsbury, via email

Unusually for a Formula 1 season, there was no big new system thought up that everyone else needed to copy. So it was very much a year of teams converging on similar concepts.

Key among these is the front wing. Since the wings were narrowed in 2014, the endplate and cascade area has been constantly played with to manage the front tyre wake to clean up airflow downstream.

This year Mercedes first found the outswept wing design and the aggressively arched outer wing profile. By the season's end pretty much every team with any sort of R&D budget left had followed this idea, so I guess the front wing remains the key development area for the teams.

Do you think Force India's nostril idea will be back in 2016?
@charlieagu on Twitter

It's a clever idea and neatly works around the rules. It could be applied to an already short nose, if its structure allows it. However, it's a lot of aero complexity and may well add weight to the nose assembly.

I'd be surprised if a team with an already short nose followed the route, but Force India may want to retain the concept and save resources rather than trying to develop a short nose that can meet the crash tests.

Is it really justifiable that McLaren's huge budget isn't enough for it to make significant steps forward through the year?
@motorsport_geek on Twitter

I'm not sure about McLaren having a huge budget! But it certainly has the resources and internal expertise to make a winning car. We have to remember McLaren is on the path back from several years of poor car performance, so it will take a huge investment to get the car back on track.

Progress through 2015 was enormous. This wasn't always apparent on track, but by the season's end the car had changed immeasurably and a solid direction had been found for 2016.

I don't think McLaren has to justify its 2015 programme, but similar failure in '16 may be less easy to swallow.

Based on what you've seen for the 2017 regs, what excites you about those cars? What changes would you make?
@Amit_Mandalia on Twitter

I have to say I'm hugely disappointed with the 2017 regulations and the targets the changes were guided by; I find it hard to be excited by any of it.

Since I started following the sport in the late seventies, I've never known of a rule that sets out to simply improve laptimes by a measurable amount (five seconds was the target) and not have another aims at the same time.

However, looking at what we will have to work with, the wider cars and wider tyres will make for an interesting change. Fans have often called for an increase in mechanical grip to aid overtaking, but I'm not sure it's in the low-speed corners - where the wider set-up will be helping the most - that overtakes are made, rather it's in the higher-speed sections.

Further compounding this issue is the new aero, which does little to cut back the complexity and sensitivity of front wings. It seems all of the thinking carefully carried out by the overtaking working group before 2009 has been forgotten by the rulemaking process.

If I had my say on the rules, then reducing front wing complexity and returning to a more balanced downforce set-up with a larger diffuser and underfloor would be my direction.

How does a team like Toro Rosso running a year-old power unit develop its engine through next season?
@tyrewear on Twitter

Toro Rosso will have its power unit specification frozen for the whole year, no parts can be changed for performance, only for the usual trio of reasons; cost saving, reliability and safety. It will be left to its software department to map the PU most efficiently and to its fuel/oil partner to bring new formulations to add horsepower, as those are the only routes open to the team.

Now that we're going into the third year of these regulations, is there any sign things will be closer with rules stability for 2016? Is Mercedes running out of things it can exploit?
Lara Shaw, via email

You are right, the potential performance left in the regulations is limited, teams are converging on the same designs and hopefully the field will bunch up.

However, for all the huge amount of things Mercedes has got right in the past two years, there is still scope for the car to improve. Such has been its dominance, development to the car has actually been quite muted, so it hasn't really unleashed its full resources to finding more out and out performance.

With Ferrari getting closer, it's likely the 2016 Mercedes will become visually quite different to the cars of the past two years to keep it ahead.

Do you think we will have more noise from the cars with the new exhaust and wastegate pipe regulation?
@LuisFeF1 on Twitter

I was initially sceptical, as the change to separate exhausts for turbo and wastegate does not provide an obvious means to increase the sound.

However, it's been pointed out to me that the flat exhaust note most people complain about is partly caused by the current set-up of joining the wastegates into the primary tailpipe.

As I understand it the 'noise' comes from the turbine, although the turbo inevitably flattens the exhaust noise somewhat, but the side branches from the wastegates meeting the main tail pipe act as 'mufflers'. This is known as a 'side branch resonator' effect.

Having the wastegates separate should allow whatever noise does pass through the turbo to make it to the ears of spectators.

What is the reason for running two additional exhaust pipes from the wastegate next season rather than one?
@Tomek_94 on Twitter

As teams employ two separate wastegates, typically one per cylinder bank, having separate exhausts makes the packaging and function of the wastegate simpler.

People talk about how Haas will be competitive because of everything it's getting from Ferrari, but other new teams have had partnerships with big teams before and still been at the back - like when HRT had a Williams gearbox and Caterham was running Red Bull parts. What makes what Haas is doing any different?
Ollie Stavrinou, via email

The previous teams you spoke of used another partner's gearbox and hydraulics, what Haas is doing is taking nearly every item that can be bought, so uprights, pedals, steering, etc.

This leaves the FIA's 'listed parts' to be made by Haas, largely the tub, crash structures and aero bodywork. Therefore, Haas will start the season with well-designed parts, allowing it to focus on the parts that really affect performance, and of course learning its way through its first year in F1.

When the trio of new teams entered the championship in 2010, their design teams were bogged down working on the hundreds of parts that add little to the car's laptime, even years later these designs were still maturing and eating up design office time. Haas is able to crack on with the priorities and that should secure more success in season one than those other teams had.

How much do you think the Renault power unit can improve with factory support and Ilmor? Can it match Ferrari's 2015 performance?
@atticvs2 on Twitter

We have to remember how far Ferrari progressed over the winter of 2014/15, as last year its performance was equal to the Renault unit. With this in mind I am sure it's possible for Renault to make progress.

In fact, its task is simpler than Ferrari's as it's the internal combustion engine that's holding its PU back. With Renault's new commitment to Formula 1 through its acquisition of Lotus, it should be able to put in the resources to make it happen.

Ilmor's input adds the lessons learnt from its involvement with the similar layout of IndyCar engines. It has all the right ingredient to start the game of catch-up.

Lewis Hamilton keeps talking about a change Mercedes made after its Singapore problems that meant the car then suited Nico Rosberg rather than him. What was the change?
Holly Drysdale, via email

Hamilton's comments are perplexing. Certainly the rules around tyre temperatures and pressures changed in Italy, then at the next race in Singapore Mercedes struggled with the tyres.

But while some set-up changes were undoubtedly made, it's still not clear what these changes were that have so badly affected Hamilton's pace. He still won in the United States, but after the championship was won at that race his pace has clearly dropped by a few tenths.

It might be something in his head or it could be something on the car, but no one at Mercedes has really fully explained the situation.