Ferrari, Red Bull and Mercedes: teams bring more upgrades and new technical packages to France

The top three teams, Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes, brought further upgrades and new technical packages to France. Each of the trio of teams has focused on the floor in some respect, with the new upgrades primarily designed to bring more downforce, increased performance or to make the floor itself more efficient. So what new technical packages did the teams bring to France?

Ferrari

With two weeks since the last round in Austria, the teams have used the time to focus on further improvements and upgrades, hoping to further strengthen their competitive form.

Ferrari have revised their ‘front and centre’ floor and have also improved the diffuser, which should take care of better airflow away from the monopost. The Italian team explained afterwards that these changes were part of the normal development cycle and would be carried over to future races.

“Its aim is to improve the overall aerodynamic performance within the whole monopost and is not specific to Paul Ricard alone,” the team explained in documents submitted to the FIA, quoted by Motorsport.

For Ferrari, this could be one of the key upgrades in the sense that not only would their cars perform a little better in corners thanks to better diffuser work, but it would also have something to do with a slight increase in top speed.

Red Bull

Like Ferrari, the Austrian stable also focused on the floor and made changes, mainly geometric, to redistribute the pressure distribution on the sides of the floor.

By doing this, Red bull wants to ensure that the floor on their cars works more efficiently and it shouldn’t happen that one part of the floor is more loaded than the other.

In short, the importance of stability of airflow in the floor is high in Formula 1. The RB18 also has a revised shape of the upper rear wing component, which will give the Red Bull cars more downforce.

Mercedes

The German team is the third team in the series to focus on the floor as part of its upgrades. This is because Mercedes has changed the end curvature of the rear tyres ahead of the rear tyres, which will improve airflow to the diffuser.

The second change is the addition of internal vanes at the outlet of the front brake duct, which will result in better cooling, and we can expect very high temperatures in France this very race weekend.

Sources