Mercedes in Canada showed a performance never seen during the season and for the first time this year it managed to stay in the fight for victory with Red Bull and McLaren. The RB20 has its star player in Max Verstappen but the car from Milton Keynes has no longer been the unbeatable single-seater in recent races. “Max was incredible, the McLarens were the fastest on the intermediates but we did well not to let things go wrong in conditions full of dangers” – Christian Horner’s comment. At Red Bull they have seen McLeren and Ferrari get closer after a start to 2024 along the lines of 2023, and Mercedes is also working to reduce the gap from the first three top teams. In Milton Keynes one side of the garage rejoices with Verstappen, on the other the dark moment continues for Sergio Perez who in Spain will have to serve the three-place penalty imposed on him by the race judge for having continued to run with the heavily damaged car after the Montreal accident. “Horrible weekend for Checo, but luckily Ferrari didn’t score points so we didn’t lose too many points in the constructors’ table”.
Red Bull is looking carefully at the wings of its competitors: Mercedes is above all in its sights.
At Red Bull, we look carefully at the work that our direct competitors are doing, with a fight at the top that is always based on the details. In the sights of the Milton Keynes team, as first stated by colleagues at Auto Motor und Sport, there would be the front wings of the RB20’s rivals. Formu1a.uno has gathered from sources close to the environment that Milton Keynes engineers, under the supervision of Paul Monaghan, have been keeping an eye on especially the new Mercedes front wing introduced in Monaco, and then passed with flying colors over both drivers in Canada. An unofficial request would have been submitted to the FIA technical office to monitor the flexions that occur at the ends of the front wing and in the W15 nose. The new wing was always found to be in order during the static checks which are carried out at the technical bench by the FIA, but it is clear that almost all teams are able to activate push-ups only at certain load ranges during the round.Listening to various insiders, the television images confirm that the front wing of the new specification W15 flexes more than the initial specification, which we had spoken extensively about as being problematic for Mercedes.
James Allison himself had spoken very positively about the update relating to the new front wing, defining it as a very important development for the continuation of the season. From a technical point of view, there is not a very relaxed atmosphere between Red Bull and Mercedes after the back and forth between James Allison and Christian Horner on the issue of Red Bull’s updates. “Their developments appear not to have yielded the desired results and seem like a step backwards” commented the Mercedes DT, promptly replied by Red Bull number one Christian Horner: “In Canada we finished ahead of them, our “step back” beat their updated car” The Brackey technicians led by James Allison have begun a process of evolution and change of the W15 which, according to Allison himself, will lead to the W15 receiving constant updates between now and the second part of the championship.
Has the 2023 TD018 directive already been bypassed by the teams?
The theme of push-ups has always been very present in the latest F1 technical regulations. In both 2022 and 2023 the FIA intervened with updates to the technical regulations to mitigate the flexions of components such as the bottom and spoilers. In October the technical office led by Nikolas Tombazis officially implemented technical directive number 18 to mitigate the use of composite carcasses that are too flexible for the front wing structure. The FIA intervenes with directives, implementing changes to the regulation, when there are justified elements which, according to the FIA, affect safety.
Illustration of the bending movement of an (old generation) wing that teams still look for today – by Rosario Giuliana
The TD018 of 2023, which also came into force thanks to the political weight of some teams, had greatly limited Aston Martin, which had begun its downgrade compared to its rivals since the Spanish GP. Over the past winter, the teams worked to try to return to pre-TD018 flexion levels, while still complying with article 3.2.2 of the regulation which limits flexions around the front wing. “By observing the teams we saw how they manage to create relative movements in the area of the nose attachment and in the external part near the lateral fins” – Nikolas Tombazis commented last year. “The teams invest a lot of resources to create surfaces that resist our load tests, but which then appear to be made of elastic material on the track” Now that the fight at the top has started to be much more bitter, the teams are looking more and more carefully at the work of their rivals to try to copy – or ask for clarifications – if there are suspicious elements regarding the use of gray areas.
