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Australian Grand Prix Tech Updates

With only two weeks between pre-season testing and the Australian Grand Prix, the teams had a monumental challenge to not only get their new 2019 machinery to Australia, but turn around any updates from testing. This didn’t stop them though….

Starting at the front, the majority of front wing designs are very similar to what was revealed during pre-season testing. With such a tight turnaround, modifying the front wing can be risky as any change can completely change the behaviour of the airflow, affecting the performance of all the other aerodynamic devices downstream. Despite this, Red Bull have made a very minor alteration to the RB15’s front wing endplates as highlighted in blue below.

Another aerodynamic change is the additional winglets added to the Halo of the Mercedes W10 for the Australian GP. Interestingly, last year despite the majority of other teams running with these type of winglets, Mercedes never did. At pre-season testing this remained the case, however for the Australian GP the W10 features a two-tier set of winglets, located on top of the main structure of the Halo, as shown below. 

It may not be shocking to know that the Australian summer is warmer than the Spanish winter. With track temperature reaching ~42degC at Albert Park compared to ~28degC at Circuit De Catalunya, the teams opened up the various vents and openings on their 2019 contenders. The Mercedes W10 has carried over the unique S-shaped opening, behind the rear of the Halo, from last year. This was blanked off during testing and opened up at the Australian GP as highlighted in blue below. The vents alongside the Halo have also been opened up. 

According to Racing Point’s Technical Director Andrew Green, the RP19 revealed at pre-season testing was very much a ‘vanilla’ car, with lots of tech updates expected for the Australian GP. One of which is a dramatically modified bargeboard area as highlighted in blue below. A simpler one-piece turning vane replaces the complex array of elements from pre-season testing and a horizontal element has also been added. 

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