Formula 1’s return to Europe this past weekend signaled the first round of major updates for most teams. Since most teams are based in Europe it makes bringing more substantial updates to the cars much more easier. Not that teams don’t update their cars at the fly-away races, but returning to Europe just makes things a little more easier. Here is a Part 1 of our F1 technical round up of the Spanish Grand Prix.

 Some of the updates were major changes as in the case with McLaren and Toro Rosso. McLaren were somewhat relying on their Barcelona updates to bring them up to pace with Red Bull and Ferrari. Did it work for them? Not so much. Button struggled to make it into Q3 while Perez did slightly better and qualified P9. Their race performance, however, was much better and they finished P9 and P10.

Lets take a look at some of the teams.

Ferrari: They had little tweaks here and there with their body work. They brought a new engine cover which features a longer fin at the back and thats slightly lower than the one they’re currently using. The rain in FP1 put a spanner in the works for them to test it. They will bring the same engine cover to Montreal. Together with the new engine cover they tested a new longer exhaust outlet with a more shallower angled exhaust. They also tried new sidepod airflow conditioners, similar to Red Bull’s “D” wing airflow conditioner, except the top section extends over the sidepod and attaches to the cockpit. They’ve somewhat kept the original design of the split airflow conditioner, only with this variation, the front section curves over the top of the sidepod and the rear section remains vertical. The purpose of the curved section is to bring the airflow around the outside of the sidepod, over the exhaust and eventually out the diffuser at the back. Both Ferrari drivers ran an additional horizontal cockpit fin ahead of the wing mirrors in addition to the two horizontal airflow conditioners behind the wing mirrors.

Lotus: Lotus came to Catalunya with a new front and rear wing. There were two changes on the front wing. They had a curved vane on the outer part of the end plate. The main deflector vane in the front wing is not slotted. The rear wing features tiny separated vanes on the endplate.

McLaren:McLaren brought along a new front wing. This new wing had one vertical slot on the endplate and a new upper flap.

They still stuck to the old three element front wing, whereas other teams are using 5-6 element wings. The sidepods have been given a make over. The vertical air flow conditioners are now attached to the edge of the sidepod making it similar to the “D” wing of Red Bull. They have ditched the horizontal airflow conditioner above the sidepods and went with twin vortex generators, similar to what they ran in 2012

Mercedes: Mercedes have dropped their three horizontal vortex generators on the side of the cockpit and have replaced it with one larger

wing. The rest of the car remained largely unchanged with most of the changes unseen.

Part 2 to follow soon.