The performance of the Toro Rosso cars at the weekend underlined how much progress the team has made in the second half of the season. But where is the boost coming from and is there a back story to it? Jaime Alguersuari and Sebastian Buemi both qualified in the top ten in India and Alguersuari raced strongly to another points finish. In the last five races the team has scored 29 points, while rivals Sauber in the same period have scored six and Force India 19. Since Suzuka in particular the Toro Rosso has been making huge strides. In Singapore More…

The Formula 1 teams have been on notice for a few weeks that the practice of “hot blowing” and “cold blowing” exhaust through the diffusers is to be banned and yesterday the FIA confirmed that this would take effect from Silverstone onwards. Meanwhile the whole concept of blown diffusers will be banned in 2012 as new rules will insist that the exhausts exit out of the back of the car, as in the past. The Technical Working Group, which consists of the FIA’s Charlie Whiting and engineers from all the teams, will meet this week to decide exactly how to More…

Further to the post earlier in the week about why the FIA is looking to clamp down on the way engines blow exhaust gases over the diffuser even when the driver lifts off the throttle, it was interesting to hear Charlie Whiting’s view on it last night. This is the second time this season that the FIA, now under a different press management team, has sat Charlie down and got him to give a media briefing. He has done a briefing for broadcasters at the start of each season for some years, but this is something to be encouraged. As More…

The first three races have given us much to reflect on in terms of the new style of racing F1 now provides, but there are some fascinating details emerging too about the relative performance of the cars. One of the things to catch the eye has been the relative pace of the Red Bull and the McLaren in qualifying and in the race. And it’s not just about who has the newest tyres. When you look at it closely you see that there is reason to feel very excited about the competition between the two cars this season. At the More…

There’s a very interesting story on Reuters featuring quotes from Williams chairman Adam Parr about the 2013 engine plans. In light of recent comments from those who are against the move away from V8s towards a ‘greener’ engine, including Bernie Ecclestone and Luca di Montezemolo, Parr says that there is no going back on the direction of travel. He also makes a point I’ve not heard before that with the 2013 engines, when the car is in the pit lane, it will be running on pure electric only, a very interesting step and quite a message, if you think about More…

As a keen recreational cyclist, I love the story of McLaren working with British cycling champion Mark Cavendish and the Specialized cycle brand to produce a killer road bike on which he can compete this season in the great cycling classic events. It had a winning debut with Cavendish’s team mate Matthew Goss this weekend. Road bikes are all about being light and stiff at the same time. The S Works McLaren Venge, as it is called, is made using state of the art carbon fibre layering techniques and the frame weighs just 930 grammes! Cavendish who has been 15 More…

Ferrari have clarified that when they speak about a third car, they are not talking about a car which would be run by the Scuderia, but one which they would make available to a new team, such as ART GP, should they win the 13th franchise for 2011. Speaking at the FOTA Fans Forum, powered by Santander, Ferrari spokesman Luca Colajanni said that “We would give them a competitive car, unless it is the one from last year.” The suggestion that test sessions, such as the one which used to take place at Silverstone, should return and give the fans More…

This weekend’s European Grand Prix at Valencia is a significant event in the story of the season from a technical point of view as it was the race where many teams unveiled a device which copies the Red Bull’s “blown diffuser”.

Last year three teams started the season with a double diffuser and, after establishing the legality of it, the rest of the field was forced to follow suit, including Red Bull. This year’s “must haves” so far have been the McLaren F Duct wing and now the blown diffuser. Red Bull is the pioneer and Mercedes, Ferrari and Renault have followed them this weekend. McLaren and Force India are due to follow at Silverstone.

On the grid this season the Red Bull mechanics have been carefully masking the diffuser from view. Although they do have something interesting to hide, in F1 this is often a bluff, indicating that the most interesting part of the car is somewhere else, but they want you to focus on the diffuser!

A blown diffuser is basically a way of using the exhaust gases to interact with the diffuser, which sits at the back of the car at the end of the floor. There are two main purposes for this;

* to try to move the wake from the rear wheels outwards where it will cause less disturbance

* to re-energise the low pressure air at the very back of the diffuser to create more rear downforce.

Rear downforce is important for driver confidence, if the driver feels good rear end stability he will push harder, so the gain on the stopwatch from this kind of development is often not what a simulator tells you it will be, but what the driver actually delivers from it.

The irony is that blown diffuser is not a new concept, unlike F Duct wings or double diffusers. Renault had one in the early 1980s, Frank Dernie put one on the Williams of Nigel Mansell in the mid 1980s and they were common from 1985 onwards. Adrian Newey’s team at Red Bull didn’t invent it, they revived it. The early ones were crude in that the rear of the car often became less stable when the driver lifted off the throttle. Everyone knows a but more about the science now.

They went out of the sport in the mid 1990s due to a change of wording in the rules, but Newey felt that the current rules would make it worth trying again.

The blown element operates independently of the “double” element of the diffuser and whereas double diffusers are banned from next season, the blown diffuser is here to stay.

The Ferrari’s exhaust exits have been moved from the high exit in the top bodywork, which they pioneered in the early 2000s, to the low exit near the floor to feed the diffuser. They stop slightly shorter than the Red Bull ones.

Low exhausts heat everything up in the area behind them and there is a risk here. Less widely reported, there was a new Ferrari gearbox this weekend, only on Felipe Massa’s car, designed to raise the pick-up points of the lower wishbone, in order to keep it away from the hot gases from the low exhausts.

Keeping temperatures under control is important and it was intersting to see a series of red stripes on the rear side section of the Ferrari diffuser. These stripes are of a special paint, which changes its colour in relation to the different temperature of the surface where its applied. In this way the Ferrari engineers could see which part of the diffuser reaches too high a temperature due to the hot gases directly blowing on them.

Ferrari’s update also includes new cooling ideas in the radiators and bodywork for the series of warm weather races coming up in the summer, as they have had problems with the engines in hot countries earlier this season.

This is an important update for Ferrari, who started the season as the pace setters but then lost ground as they got bogged down with developing the F Duct rear wing at the cost of other avenues. Meanwhile McLaren, Mercedes and Renault all stole a march on them.

Renault also had significant upgrades, including the blown diffuser. In this illustration by our technical artist Paolo Filisetti, you can see the old style high exhausts at the top and the new low style ones at the bottom.

Renault continue to push hard, they brought the 22nd iteration of their front wing to Valencia, the ninth race of the season.

And finally Lotus had a good qualifying session in Valencia, with Jarno Trulli the fastest of the new teams, increasing the margin over the other new teams to 1.4 seconds. That said the gap to the slowest of the established teams, ironically Kobayashi’s Sauber, had also grown to over a second.

One key update for Lotus this weekend was a new front wing solution, which owes a lot to design ideas on last year’s Toyota. Many of the engineers at Lotus came from Toyota so this is not altogether surprising.

This weekend the teams faced up to the challenges of the Monaco Grand Prix circuit, one of the most famous but also most difficult circuits on the calendar.

Monaco is a unique circuit and calls for some particular details in the technical preparation of the cars, which you will not find anywhere else.

The main one is the steering lock, which needs to be 21 degrees in order to get round the Loews hairpin. Normally an F1 car has a steering lock of 17 degrees.

It is possible to run a standard steering lock and still make the turn, but engineers tell me that it is around 3/10ths of a second slower, so everybody runs the extended steering range.

The brake calipers get quite hot here so there is extra ducting to them. Some of the new teams found that they had not factored in enough cooling and struggled in the race.

The other point to make is that the cars use less fuel to cover the race distance here. Around 125 kilos instead of the 160 they use at many tracks.

And there are quite a few wrong assumptions, such as the idea that you need to run the suspension soft. In fact very stiff set ups can work very well in Monaco. Look at slow motion shots of Robert Kubica attacking the kerbs and you’ll see what I mean.

Monaco is unusual because you need very little entry stability to corners, all the braking is straight. Then you need to be able to turn without understeer. If you can manage that then traction comes because car is turned and pointing straight. Traction in a straight line has a significant effect on lap time, so a rearward weight distribution is beneficial. But there is a trade-off because this can add rear tyre wear, which is often a problem in the race, particularly on the super soft tyre as we saw last year here.

New tech on the cars
There were not many technical updates on view this weekend, more Monaco specific details looking for extra downforce and traction.

Ferrari did not use its drag reducing (F Duct) rear wing here but they did have an additional couple of winglets placed one each side of the shark fin.

This was done to increase the downforce generated at the level of the rear axle so to improve the traction on this very slow circuit. The wing angle was of course at its maximum figure both front and rear.

Ferrari team principal Stefano Domenicali revealed this weekend that the F Duct rear wing needs some work before its reintroduction in Turkey because, although it gave the team the fastest car through the speed traps, the team found in Spain that it took overall downforce away from the car and this is a handicap in competition with the Red Bull.

Red Bull’s technical wizardry
Red Bull had many teams scratching their heads after qualifying almost one second clear of the rest in Spain. Again in Monaco the margin of pole position was 3/10ths of a second, which is a lot. The team does not yet have a drag reducing rear wing and its Renault engine is considered not as powerful as the Mercedes. This meant that it was 20th through the speed trap on Saturday, some 9km/h down on the Ferraris. However it made up for that in its speed around the corners, thanks to its high level of downforce.

The secret of the Red Bull is the multiple little details which ensure that the bodywork of the car is optimised to work with the airflow that comes off the front wing and gives the massive diffuser the best chance to function. Red Bull were making microscopic changes to the front wings in Spain, adding a tiny gurney flay to the top element in practice to fine tune this.

The bodywork at the rear of the car is incredibly slender and low it is designed to clean up the airflow. The exhausts have been repositioned low and the technical team has introduced small slots just in front of the rear wheels, all tiny details to optimise the car. The result is a well balanced, aerodynamically efficient missile, perfectly in tune with itself.

Mercedes revert to shorter wheelbase
Mercedes reverted to the standard wheelbase on its car for Monaco, after extending it by 5cm in Barcelona. The shorter wheelbase is more suitable for the dynamic demands of the tight circuit. The longer wheelbase is designed to give the car more of a range of options on weight distribution.

Mercedes will revert to the longer wheelbase for the next Grand Prix in Turkey.

Among the teams bringing updates to Barcelona the ones likely to make the biggest gain are the new teams – because they are coming from the furthest back. In the case of Lotus their entry for 2010 was only accepted in September last year and they had one month to finalise the design before going into production, in order to make the pre-season tests. They put out a fairly conservative car for the opening races, always aiming at a major upgrade package for Barcelona. And technical director Mike Gascoyne says that a gain of around 1.5 to 2 seconds per More…