In the 2023 Formula 1 season the biggest performance gains for the teams will come more from aerodynamic packages and not from weight reduction.
The first year of the new rules and regulations for the Formula 1 cars based on the ground-effect concept saw different aerodynamic philosophies used by teams. A very extreme double floor for Alfa Romeo and Aston Martin, as well as a more standard version with a downwash effect of the sidepods for Red Bull; without forgetting all the talks about the Mercedes size-zero sidepods which will be confirmed on the W14 with the necessary changes to correct its defects, and the much sought “goldfish tank” concept of the Ferrari F1-75.
The other F1 teams then began during the season to take aerodynamic ideas from Red Bull and Ferrari, certainly the most performing cars, but without ever really overturning the hierarchies that have been seen since the beginning of the 2022 Formula 1 season. There are mainly two reasons, as indicated by F1 experts Piergiuseppe Donadoni & Paolo D’Alessandro for formu1a.uno:
The projects are still relatively new and several teams have taken a long time to exploit the full potential of their cars, such as Aston Martin, which introduced its AMR22 Spec-B in Spain but managed to be consistently competitive for the points zone only towards the end of the 2022 Formula One campaign.
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In the past season, many teams have gained more performance from slimming their cars than from the aero component of the new developments. The most striking example was the fight at the top between Scuderia Ferrari and Red Bull. In Maranello they started the season with a significant advantage in terms of weight over the RB18 and this too meant that the F1-75 enjoyed some advantage. However, the Milton Keynes team then increased its performance quite quickly simply by producing lighter pieces, which significantly affected the budget cap; also for this reason, during the winter the choice was made not to push too much on development in terms of weight, knowing that the 2021 challenge with Mercedes had required additional resources.
The development challenge therefore saw Maranello concentrate mainly on evolutions from an aerodynamic point of view, while Red Bull was able to find performance more easily, albeit more expensively. The same goes for Alfa Romeo which started the season enjoying an important advantage: being below the minimum weight and thus guaranteeing the use of ballast to maximize weight distribution. However, it then struggled to find more performance through developments while other teams gained mainly with weight loss packages, overtaking it in the hierarchy during the 2022 F1 season.
Another advantage that will disappear in the next season will be that of optimizing the power units given that there will only be one update available regarding the ECU software. In addition to this we could add the fact that, according to rumors, the potential of the four power units could get even closer. The Honda unit is the one that has the least room for development. Mercedes has managed to resolve its crankshaft problems and will have the opportunity to exploit full power in 2023 while Ferrari and Renault are solving their reliability problems to be able to express their maximum potential.
Gieven the absence of software updates to the PUs, the possibility that all manufacturers will be able to operate their full power units, and the cars of the top teams much closer in terms of weight, it means that each team will be at its best. The 2023 Formula One season will therefore be the first real opportunity to evaluate the teams in terms of aerodynamic development of the new F1 cars.
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