The second part of this f1 technical round up will focus on Sauber, Toro Rosso, Red Bull and Caterham.
Sauber: Sauber’s biggest change was the new rear wing. For the first few races the team ran a wing with a dipped central section. This little dip in the middle of the main plane allows for more down force but does not add to drag. They’ve tested a more conventional version in the races preceding Barcelona and have reverted to the conventional design in Barcelona.
Toro Rosso: Toro Rosso made a number of changes to the bodywork of their car. The biggest change is to the rear of the car where they’ve took a leaf from their big brother team, Red Bull, and they’ve added the cross under tunnel solution which Red Bull has had on their car since 2012. The way it works is that the air from the side of the side pod, moves around the outside of the side pod and down towards the floor, the air then moves underneath the coanda exhaust towards the central part of the rear diffuser. They exhaust exits are also very similar to the Red Bull solution. The only difference for Toro Rosso would be the Ferrari engines. The engine would make a difference in tuning the coanda exhaust to work with this solution. Another big update was the detached front side pod. This helps attach the airflow over the top of the side pod along the bodywork which better aids the coanda exhaust.
Caterham: Caterham brought an almost “B-Spec” car to the CT-03. They brought along a new side pod air flow conditioner. It is now a twin element airflow conditioner with the rear section curving around the top of the side pod and attaching to the top edge of the side pod. They’ve also added a vanity panel to the front which gets rid of the stepped nose. Another addition was the horizontal vane under the wing mirrors. This little vane creates a vortex that will attaches the airflow to the top of the side pods.
Red Bull: There weren’t that many updates that were reported on the Red Bull car. One of the updates was to their rear wing. They’ve gone from curved rear wing end plate louvres to more horizontal louvres. This brings them in line with the other teams on the grid. They’ve also made some changes to the rear of the car. More specifically around the rear wheels/exhaust area. They’ve added and additional vane on the floor ahead of the rear wheels. These vanes “catch” the air flow off the tyres due to the tyres’ rotation (tyre squirt) and channel the air towards the rear of the car. This does help to minimise tyre squirt, but it’s not a cure.
This coming week see’s the Formula 1 circus head to Monaco. We can expect to see lots of additional wings and vanes on the front wings of the cars all to get that extra bit of down force. We can also expect to see heavily raked rear wings, anything for extra down force. Mercedes will be quite strong here as they are quite strong with the slow speed corners and we cant discount Red Bull.
