The key tech talking points at the end of F1 pre-season testing

As it turned out, the 2022 Formula 1 regulations weren’t that restrictive. Constraints can often encourage creativity, and the brightest minds in the design offices have had to exploit every single letter placed in the reams of regulations to which teams have to design their cars. Fundamentally, the rules pose standard design problems – to which the engineers must develop the best solution.

In response to that problem, 10 different solutions have been dreamed up, developed and built for 2022. There are slots and ripples and cuts, and sidepods and fins and struts – but without wishing to descend into a Dr Seuss-esque poem about the various appendages on the 2022 F1 cars, there’s a plethora of different options that each team has explored ready for the Bahrain season-opener.

The result has been a series of very different cars that the drivers have had to get used to. The cars are stiffer altogether, not helped by the change in tyre diameter, and the aerodynamic properties have made the cars monstrous in the higher-speed corners but more clunky in the numerous tight corners on display at Bahrain.

The second test also afforded a few teams an opportunity to introduce new updates in the pipeline for the start of the season – or simply to get more mileage on the clock for those who struggled in Spain. Naturally, there were plenty of technical talking points across Bahrain – and the general pre-season run into the season. Without further ado, let’s recap.

Mercedes surprised the F1 paddock with a podless W13

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Mercedes goes podless

This is no longer pod-racing for Mercedes. In a dramatic change from Barcelona to Bahrain, Mercedes’ W13 emerged at the Sakhir circuit for the first day of testing with distinctly minimal sidepod bodywork. Think of Lamborghini’s 291 F1 car from 1991, but more radical; the two inlets look like letterboxes, such is their tiny size, albeit enlarged on top to create the slightly triangular shape when viewed from the front.

The revised sidepods were something already in the pipeline for Mercedes; the more conventional design seen at the launch and at Barcelona appeared to be largely a smokescreen, as the car internals were pre-packaged to take the considerably slimmer bodywork.

To fit the regulations, Mercedes has placed its lowest impact spar to a lower position in the car and the upper structure has been placed higher up to host the wing mirrors and a series of vortex generators. Ahead of the inlets, two little downwashing fins have been placed on the side of the chassis to encourage the airflow downwards towards the inlet.

The real question is one of cooling: can the sidepods produce enough cool air for all of the internals?

Without the bargeboards playing a factor in the 2022 rules, and the cars stripped of all the aero devices that used to cling onto the sidepod, working with the front tyre wake has had to change. One option that some teams have adopted is creating flatter sides to the car and using the sidepod itself to channel the wake away – but Mercedes has opted for the opposite direction. Now, the sidepods are largely kept away from the wake and work with the outer strake attached to the floor.

Airflow is then able to wash down the car and follow the bodywork along the floor, helping to build up downforce from the floor through the difference in pressure. The floor has changed in response to the reworked sidepods, with the ripples discarded and small triangular protrusions replacing them. This will build vortices along the floor’s edge to help provide more of a seal.

The real question is one of cooling: can the sidepods produce enough cool air for all of the internals? One of the areas that Mercedes has paid a lot of attention to is in its heat exchanger technology and, by installing the cooling gills on top of the bodywork, the components inside the car should be able to breathe adequately enough and not overheat.

While Mercedes’ large-scale upgrade has turned many heads, the W13 is proving a tricky beast to tame. That’s partly down to the porpoising phenomenon that has resurfaced following the switch to ground-effect aerodynamics…

Ferrari is one of the teams that appears to be most on top of the porpoising phenomenon

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

A sense of porpoise

Porpoising courted the column inches during the first week of pre-season testing in Barcelona. As the cars dropped down to the first corner, they began to shake up and down visibly, pacified only by the application of DRS or by the driver lifting off.

The appearance of porpoising appeared to catch many by surprise – even the teams, who had not encountered the sudden onset of an oscillating heave motion during their simulations. And although a few teams such as McLaren and Ferrari weren’t quite as afflicted by it in Bahrain, there was still a noticeable vertical shake along the straights from the majority of cars, especially the Mercedes.

Former F1 aerodynamicist Jean-Claude Migeot, who worked with Renault in the original ground-effects era in the 1980s, believes porpoising occurs when the ground-effect aerodynamics accelerate the airflow enough to induce the car’s natural heave frequency. This leaves the car susceptible to resonance, where the car is in a position where it is effectively undamped, particularly with the long chord length of the floor.

PLUS: The mechanics behind porpoising in F1 - and how to fix it

“When the car is shaking up and down quickly it can generate other forces,” says Migeot. “It’s the same for an aeroplane when it’s climbing. When the pilot is pulling the stick there is an oscillation of incidence and there is a first link to the speed of pitch. But this coefficient is stabilising so in fact, the movement of the aeroplane is completely stable.

“For an F1 car it’s destabilising because it increases the downforce when the car goes down and it’s diminishing it when the car is moving up. That’s the first step. The second step is these forces are big only in certain circumstances. Up to last year, they were ridiculous; they were so low, that it was not even worth measuring them because they had no influence. But when you have a system which is almost a closed channel, which used to be the case with skirts and which looks like the case now when the perimeter of the floor is very close to the ground, the amplitude [of the forces] start to be annoying, really annoying. And this happens because there is an interaction.

“This starts because we’re talking about a long chord [floor] – a length of several metres, which is in the same frequency range as the natural frequency of the car. The car has two natural frequencies (actually, there are four, but let’s put the wheels bouncing outside of the picture because that’s where they’re controlled by the dampers): the heave frequency, which is the movement you see [in porpoising], and the pitch frequency.

“If the floor is on a very short chord like a wing, because the phenomenon could be the same under the front wing, for instance, when it’s very low [to the ground], you don’t get the same effect. But the chord being so short, its ‘exciting’ frequency is much higher than the car frequency. It’s completely filtered.”

Migeot says that the now-banned inerters – or ‘third damper’ – would have helped teams address porpoising in the car but, with limited suspension parameters, gains will have to be found in the windtunnel. For now, teams are having to raise rideheights to mitigate the effect of porpoising in the car – but at the hefty cost of underbody performance from the venturi tunnels underneath.

Red Bull's late testing development saw a more pronounced undercut and small channel over the top of the sidepod added

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Red Bull introduces final-day developments

In Barcelona, Red Bull’s sidepod concept was finally unveiled after a ‘secretive’ launch of its RB18, featuring a distinct undercut burrowing underneath the front inlet to yield more open floor space on top of the entry port.

Once again proving reticent to show off its developments for the second round of testing, Red Bull revealed a new sidepod package on the final day of Bahrain’s pre-season event, introducing a more pronounced undercut and also adding a small channel over the top of the sidepod area to help channel airflow downwards at an earlier point. The team has also stuck with the line of gills that it trialled in Barcelona testing, increasing the level of internal cooling on offer.

PLUS: Why Red Bull and Ferrari really start as F1’s early 2022 ‘favourites’

Across the test, Red Bull also experimented with a range of front wings with different upper flap profiles, looking to get a glimpse of how their designs affect the airflow further down the car and home in on which design will work best for the opening race. On the final day, the team also seemed to find something a little extra over the other teams with the ride of the RB18, finding enough compliance to give Max Verstappen a final surge up the lap charts at the close of the test. Plus ça change.

The team has also stuck with the line of gills that it trialled in Barcelona testing, increasing the level of internal cooling on offer

But as ever, testing is one big charade. Red Bull looked keen to send Verstappen out on some hot laps at the end of the final day, but is the Milton Keynes squad simply doing a better job than the other outfits or did the other teams elect not to join in with the hot laps right at the end?

Thankfully, nobody needs to wait very long to view the true picture.

Lando Norris completed all three days of the Bahrain test for McLaren with team-mate Daniel Ricciardo missing after testing positive for COVID-19

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McLaren struggles with front brakes

After a strong run at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, McLaren endured a much more difficult second batch of running in Bahrain. Overheating issues with the brakes severely limited the long running that Lando Norris – on sole test duties owing to Daniel Ricciardo’s positive COVID-19 test – could do as McLaren sought to find a fix.

With the change to the front wheels, McLaren has found it difficult to get the right level of airflow into the wheel assembly and provide adequate cooling within – and across a full race distance, it will decrease the effectiveness of braking at the front and severely hamper their lifespan. McLaren has to fix that for the opening round of the season.

“The test definitely didn’t go to plan,” Andreas Seidl told F1 TV. “We had an unexpected problem on the front axle with the brakes, which limited our running quite a bit, especially when it came to long runs. So it puts us definitely a bit on the back foot.

“I think there was still a lot of positive runs we could do as well, we still could work on the car to extract more performance from it. We still could bring further upgrades to the car as well. So that was positive. But we have this issue, and we simply are up against the time in order to bring upgrades to the car to solve the issue, which we could do [on Saturday] to a certain degree, but not to the full extent. And now simply hope that with the upgrades we get for [the Bahrain GP] that the problem is finally solved, and we can try to come back.”

F1 teams have struggled to bring their cars down to the minimum weight limit

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

F1 puts on more weight

Over the Bahrain test, the FIA agreed to a 3kg weight increase following concerns from multiple teams that their 2022 cars were considerably overweight. That’s largely down to the introduction of the 18-inch tyres, along with changes to the safety systems and structures on board the car, but the FIA has also conceded that some of the standardised parts have also tipped the scales further than expected.

With the increased number of standard parts, aiming to help the teams cut costs to meet the budget cap, the teams have struggled to bring their cars down to the 795kg minimum limit. That, allied to the need for some teams to strengthen their floors to limit flex, has resulted in a slight weight increase to help sweeten the pill.

“The issue with the weight is that certain standard components turned out to be a bit heavier than anticipated, and that was not in the team control,” said FIA head of single-seater matters Nikolas Tombazis.

With the increased number of standard parts, aiming to help the teams cut costs to meet the budget cap, the teams have struggled to bring their cars down to the 795kg minimum limit

“So we wanted to compensate for that, or not penalise teams as a result. Obviously a lot of teams have been struggling with weight this year, more than normal. As part of the whole package, let’s say, there was an agreement on a 3kg proposed increase. That is awaiting F1 Commission approval, so it’s not a guarantee at the moment.

“Tyres were only a small amount heavier, I think 100g [more in total] compared to the prediction, quite a small number. The wheel rims were about equal weight to the predictions, maybe a smidgen less. And then wheel covers turned out to be a bit more heavy than expected. That was the bulk. There’s been quite a lot of effort to make them cheap, because they’re quite expendable. And we didn’t want to have to make [them expensive], we could have made them lighter, out of carbon or something.”

All teams were able to deliver improvements between the Barcelona and Bahrain pre-season tests

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

Further developments across the grid

Ferrari’s reliability and pace has marked it as one of the favourites for the early part of 2022 among some of the teams, even though the Scuderia has avoided making wholesale changes to its F1-75 for the second week of testing in search of optimising what it already has. That said, it made a few tweaks to its floor, introducing a slotted addition to promote further sealing along the floor. Behind that, a smaller flap features with a slight tunnel to it to build and tighten any floor-sealing vortices.

McLaren introduced an overwhelmingly similar configuration to its floor, albeit with the slotted element ending in a point that will also help with vortex placement ahead of the curved flap.

“It has been a positive six days,” said Ferrari principal Mattia Binotto, “because we’re running consistently, learning a lot from the car, getting a lot of data, cross-correlating back at Maranello, windtunnel and simulator. That was the first objective and I think that we achieved it. Then in terms of performance it’s very difficult to judge.”

Pirelli’s new tyres are also proving to hand the F1 teams a few curveballs with regards to set-up, as the cars looked difficult to navigate around the difficult Turn 9/10 hairpin. The stiffer profile has been unable to find enough purchase to prevent the unloaded left-front tyre from locking. The slip angles generated by the tyres have also proved unforgiving, resulting in a lot of understeer characteristics in the cars.

Overall, the tyres do seem more durable as a result – but don’t yield the same level of grip, which Lewis Hamilton drew attention to. “Everyone is sliding around,” Hamilton said. “We all seem to have got less grip than before, the tyres are worse this year. On the long run, it’s physically a lot easier, what I found just there.”

He did, however, offer some encouragement about one of the main targets of the new rules, to encourage closer racing: “But the positive, so far following behind another car looks a lot better, which is I think hopefully the right direction. I hope we can maybe get some better tyres at some stage, or maybe they will work better in places it’s not so hot.”

It appeared F1 cars could follow each other more closely which was the key aim of the new rules

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images