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The tech developments F1 made while 'on holiday'

Formula 1 teams must spend two weeks of the annual summer break on a complete factory shutdown, but they still manage to turn up at Spa with plenty of new developments. Here's what the grid brought back from their summer holidays

Jake Boxall-Legge Giorgio Piola Sep 2, 2019, 1:51 PM

You can imagine that Formula 1's cast of designers rarely enter 'holiday mode'. Even with the mandatory summer shutdown, designing an F1 car is pretty all-consuming, and it's fun to imagine engineers spending their time on the beaches of the Costa del Sol sketching new front wing designs in the sand with a stick.

OK, maybe it's not that fun.

But even with the break in proceedings, there's always a collection of new parts on show at Spa-Francorchamps. The run from La Source to Les Combes is flat-out, as is Blanchimont. So, every little bit of drag you can shave from the car is absolutely crucial to any chance of victory in Belgium. Certainly, the low-downforce packages will have been prepared well in advance, but a car's inherent dragginess can still stymie progress on the fast sections.

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Author Jake Boxall-Legge

Jake studied engineering at university, as his original ambition was to design racing cars. He was bad at that, and thus decided to write about them instead with an equally limited skillset. The above article is a demonstration of that. In his spare time, Jake enjoys people, places, and things.