Why successfully emulating Red Bull’s dominant F1 concept isn’t straightforward

One of the key words bandied around at the dawn of Formula 1’s second ground-effect era was “revolution”. Appropriate enough at the time as the stakeholders chased a dream of an action-packed future in which a new emphasis on underbody aerodynamics would banish processional racing. Less so now as design orthodoxy naturally coalesces around the most successful solution: Red Bull’s record-breaking RB19.

It’s understandable given the major inputs into such decisions: the sheer margin of Red Bull’s dominance in 2023; the existence of a cost cap which naturally restricts experimentation; and the fact that the next rules reset is two seasons away.

In 2008 Honda had three different design teams spitballing ideas in separate wind tunnels for the incoming ’09 ruleset and the result was dominance (even if Honda didn’t get to enjoy it after panic-selling the team for £1 as the global financial crisis gripped). But we’re not in Kansas anymore. Increasingly, pragmatism trumps originality in contemporary F1. In what’s now a rigidly cost-controlled environment, thanks to the budget cap, a team that has gone down a dead-end development path cannot simply spend their way out of it.

This has led to a more gradual convergence than would have been the case in the free-spending era around what Red Bull has proved to be a winning formula. It’s also meant teams which have pivoted mid-season in key aerodynamic areas – and that is most of them, from Mercedes through to Haas – have found adopting, say, the ‘downwash’ sidepod configuration doesn’t immediately unlock laptime.

In fact, both of the teams mentioned above – Mercedes in Monaco last year, Haas in Austin – found that applying what the media habitually describes as ‘upgrades’ didn’t yield an instant uptick in performance. While this appeared to come as a surprise to the American team, Mercedes’ reflection upon it was suitably nuanced.

“The change to the sidepod fronts were,
‘let’s just not have that as a thing to worry about for the future,’” explained technical director James Allison in a post-season media briefing. “And actually, as part of the overall package of things we put on that car there and then, the decision to go to that new sidepod front probably took about two-tenths of a second off the update package we put on the car. 

Following the Red Bull approach of downwashed sidepods on the W14 didn't yield an enormous improvement due to baked in car traits

Photo by: Erik Junius

“But we would at least know, from that point forward, that we don’t have to fret about that. After a pretty torrid 14 months, we could just take that off the table as a variable, although actually, that particular change on that particular day was slower than what preceded it.”

Indeed, further optimisation and developments enabled Mercedes to negate those initial losses and then find improvements in laptime, even though the shift to the Red Bull-style downwashing sidepods carried inherent compromise because of unchangeable elements of the W14’s structure. Fundamentally, while F1’s legions of self-appointed tech ‘experts’ like to point at a particular area of a car and say developments there are worth several tenths of a second, the reality is far more nuanced: any aerodynamic component’s value depends on its relationship with the other surfaces of the car, working as a complete system.

“We’re always looking at what [other] people are doing,” AlphaTauri (now Visa Cash App RB) technical director Jody Egginton told Autosport during a similar post-season explainer. “And it’s about bringing all that together and understanding it.

To a great extent, then, the fixation with sidepod configurations has been the proverbial red herring. That’s why grafting ‘downwash’ sidepods onto existing designs hasn’t necessarily proved transformative

“The downwashing concept, we can all sit there and draw it, it’s not a problem. The devil is the detail, and we’re moving ourselves forward with lots of small details on the car.”

Copying’s hidden perils

All F1 teams employ photographers to spy on the opposition (the FIA, too, routinely commissions such imagery as part of its mandate to ensure regulatory compliance). But while gains were easy to find through copying in bygone decades, increasing aerodynamic sophistication from the 1990s onwards has resulted in outright imitation becoming less useful.

A modern F1 car is a complex network of interdependent influences, which is why engineers such as Adrian Newey – rightly lauded for his ability to ‘understand’ how a car is working – have achieved such success.

Never has this been more true than in the latest ground-effect era where so much is happening underneath the car. The portion of the vehicle we spectators can actually see is merely playing a supporting role – hence the excitement when Sergio Perez binned his RB19 in Monaco and
 F1’s image artists scrambled to get pictures of
 its underbody venturi as it was craned away.

Where the magic happens is underneath the car, which is why Perez's crash in Monaco drew such great interest

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

To a great extent, then, the fixation with sidepod configurations has been the proverbial red herring. That’s why grafting ‘downwash’ sidepods onto existing designs hasn’t necessarily proved transformative: the distribution of surface pressure on the top surface of the floor has to be optimised, and the overall flow must help to build a low-pressure area behind the floor to encourage underbody flow. Generally the gains to be found in the visible areas of the cars were on the front wing and around the ducting for the rear brakes.

Equally, while Perez’s stumbles have enabled rivals to get a glimpse of Red Bull’s holiest of holies, the floor configuration itself – particularly the ‘fences’ influencing airflow around the entrances and exits of the underbody venturi – has an interdependent relationship with the upper surfaces and with the suspension dynamics. It is well known in the paddock that one of the key drivers of Red Bull’s dominance has been its ability to run the RB18 and RB19 at the low ride heights which maximise the effectiveness of the floor – all the while not falling prey to the porpoising and bouncing which have afflicted other teams trying to run that low.

Thus the rather less sexy topic of suspension design has assumed greater significance. The dynamics of current cars reward stiffness. But there are trade-offs to be made in order to avoid bouncing because ground-effect cars rely on stability to work across a wide range of corners. Red Bull’s front suspension arrangement drew attention last year since its sophisticated geometry was clearly aimed at reducing dive.

McLaren was the only other team to employ pullrods at the front. It, along with Alfa Romeo, Alpine, AlphaTauri and Red Bull ran pushrods rather than pullrods at the rear – a solution Mercedes has now adopted; bringing customer team Aston Martin with it since the gearbox and rear suspension designs are integral.

Williams, also a Mercedes customer, has opted to retain the 2023 gearbox and pullrod rear suspension. Is this a disadvantage? Williams team principal James Vowles reckons not – and, while he would of course say that, other experienced voices agree.

“The pullrod/pushrod debate at the rear isn’t a talking point, really,” said Sauber technical director James Key at the launch of the C44, which has adopted a pullrod front. “It’s mechanically better to go pushrod for various packaging reasons. There isn’t much in it. But the pullrod on the front is a different story.”

Williams has kept faith with the pullroad rear suspension configuration at the rear of its FW46

Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

This is because adopting a pullrod arrangement at the front unlocks potential aerodynamic benefits in what is a critical area influencing flow towards the sidepods and underbody venturi. These benefits are believed to outweigh the inevitable packaging and access/servicing challenges.

The nagging doubt for technical directors not based in Milton Keynes is how much additional performance Red Bull will have discovered, having ended RB19 development early last year. Part of that was driven by the cumulative ‘hit’ on resource through F1’s sliding-scale rubric (which cuts wind tunnel time and/or CFD processing for the leading teams) and the penalty for breaching the cost cap.

But equally, the RB19’s dominance made it prudent to withhold new ideas. And this appears to be what has come to pass, since the RB20 is full of them – including an aggressive new sidepod treatment which may move the game on from the configuration so many rivals have been rushing to emulate.

There are more positive voices out there. James Allison believes the current rules impose a lower and more defined ‘ceiling’ so the gaps in performance will become less pronounced.

"It’s a trend that has happened from 2022, continued in 2023 and I think will continue to show itself in 2024" James Allison

“If you look at the bigger picture, this is a grid that’s gradually compressing,” he told media ahead of the new season. “All the cars in Q1 would sort of squash down within one second of each other, and that’s not coincidence. It’s a trend that has happened from 2022, continued in 2023 and I think will continue to show itself in 2024 because the gains are getting more and more asymptotic [ie limited, like prime numbers becoming less common as they grow larger].”

It’s for this reason that Pirelli is retaining the same tyre compounds and construction from 2023. After three rounds last year it had to bring forward a development step originally planned for the end of the season.

Allison adds: “I think, therefore, that in addition to us – I hope – having worked well, my guess is it’s going to be relatively busier near the top of the grid this time around than last.”

Red Bull has sought to move the game on further with the aggressive sidepods on its RB20

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

The height of the matter

Under F1’s previous ruleset, rear ride height varied from 120mm to 140mm for the most extreme ‘high-rake’ designs. Now most cars operate in a narrow window around 60mm.

The science is simple: air passing at high speed under the car and through the twin venturi is generating a low-pressure area, in effect sucking the vehicle towards the ground. But that force will also draw air in from the side of the car, diminishing the suction effect.

There is a balance to be struck because, if the car gets too low, the diffuser can stall, setting in motion the cyclical process of porpoising. This is a separate but related problem to the bouncing initiated by a low-riding, stiffly suspended car bottoming out.

With any ground-effect
car some porpoising is inevitable. The skill of the designers and engineers is to make it less like a switch so the car is stable in as many conditions as possible.

Last year the FIA tried to reduce porpoising by reducing overall downforce. A proposal to raise the edges of the floors by 25mm was watered down to 15mm as the majority of teams reduced the impact of the problem by development.

While most teams took this opportunity to run their cars lower, achieving legality by raising the floor at the edge, Mercedes stuck to its late-2022 policy of optimising around a higher ride height, having been forced in that direction while curing the W13’s bouncing. While there were reasons for this – most teams agree simulations fall short in predicting bouncing – Merc quickly realised it was chasing limited gains.

“We placed value on the wrong things,” says technical director James Allison. “There was a debate: should we cash in that 15mm and drop the car down, operate in a window that’s 15mm smaller because the cars will be less bouncy inherently? Or should we do more of what has done us well over the course of the year [2022], which is force ourselves to keep looking for downforce where it’s difficult: high up?”

The mid-season revamp focused on undoing that decision but there were limits to what could be done, given the structural integration of the rear suspension and the gearbox casing. This year’s W15 features new front and rear suspension geometry
and a new gearbox too.

New Mercedes W15 has been totally revamped after Allison recognised it was chasing the wrong things

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images