General
What is "the trap" behind adding upgrades to the current F1 cars?
Max Verstappen has been very critical in recent weeks: One minute his RB20 does pretty much everything he wants, only for that to turn into an 'uncontrollable' car barely a few minutes later. For example, qualifying at the Italian Grand Prix could be used a case study, with Q2 being fine and then in Q3, the balance was suddenly totally gone. Verstappen and Red Bull are not alone in this, with teams like Mercedes and Aston Martin also struggling this season to find the right windage for their cars.
The crazy thing is, this is only the third year of the current set of regulations, and unexpectedly, this became an important issue during the middle of the season. Luca Furbatto, Aston Martin's Engineering Director, obviously pondered how this could suddenly occur. "Well it's an interesting question. I think we suffered a little bit last year, and this year," stated the Italian, speaking to GPblog and others.
"It's not easy to develop the current generation of cars, obviously ground effects, you need to run very close to the ground, but it's very difficult to test in the wind tunnel. So depending on the map you're running, for example, something might look a bit better on the wind tunnel, so you do it, but then maybe you bring it to the track, and then a bit of bouncing, you need to lift the car up, and then you lose what you have gained.."
Teams back to square one
So, according to Furbatto, teams are not making steps forward, but backwards in some cases once they hit the track. "You end up fitting the old package because it's better. I think quite a few teams have fallen into that trap. So it's not super easy to develop, it's a technical challenge."
This article was written in collaboration with Kada Sarkozi
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