Front Wings: comparing Ferrari's design to Mercedes, Red Bull and the rest of the 2019 grid

Front Wings: comparing Ferrari’s design to Mercedes, Red Bull and the rest of the 2019 grid. Front Wings: comparing Ferrari's design to Mercedes, Red bull and the rest of the 2019 grid.

The 2019 season has brought with it a raft of technical regulation changes, but perhaps the most noticeable is the wider, simple front wings that grace this year’s F1 cars. Interestingly, the first test revealed a wide variety of initial front wing designs – but who has done what and why?

In shaping the front wing there’s always been a double challenge: a) Using it to direct the airflow around the front tyre in the best way possible (something that is currently crucial for overall aero efficiency) and b) In directly generating downforce from the wing itself. The new regulations have changed the point of that trade-off – and in these early stages there’s no agreement on where the best trade-off is.

Widening the wing by 100mm, taking it out closer to level with the tyre, has helped the teams overcome the banning of the multiple element endplates in turning the flow around the tyre. But that airflow still needs some encouragement from the shaping of the wing to do that. Intriguingly, there is virtually no uniformity between the teams in that shaping.

The two extremes of philosophy are represented by Mercedes and Red Bull at one end and Alfa Romeo and Ferrari at the other. The Merc W10 and Red Bull RB15 each feature wings that at the outboard ends use the full allowable depth, rather than having them taper down to clear a space ahead of the tyre – as Alfa and Ferrari have done.

The Ferrari features a more swoopy and less extreme version of the philosophy seen on the Alfa, with the five elements swooping up from the neutral central section before bunching together low down at the outboard ends. The bottom of the wing swoops upwards at the outer ends to create a big ‘throat’ beneath there, encouraging the flow around the tyre. The upper elements swoop downwards to meet that upward sweep, converging well below the maximum height allowed.

By using the nine sliders below, which were created by motorsportweek.com, you can compare Ferrari’s front-wing with its nine rivals in order to see just how different each concept is: