F1 aero expert hints Mercedes could fall BEHIND rival teams after summer break

The first half of the 2023 season will be written down in history as the most dominant period for Red Bull.

Christian Horner's team have won all 12 races this season, beating the long-standing record of McLaren with their iconic driver pairing of Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna.

However, the competition behind them has been stiff and there’s a development war that’s been brewing.

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Aston Martin clearly started as the second fastest car but have been out-developed by Mercedes, Ferrari and surprisingly McLaren.

In this article, we trace back the steps to understand the development trajectory of the front-running teams and why they are where they are now.

Data-Centric Approach

We analysed the development trajectories of each constructor over the past 12 races for the 2023 campaign using qualifying data.

We took the gap to the fastest car per constructor in order to analyse the qualifying single-lap performance of each team. Unsurprisingly, Red Bull was the reference every single time other than Azerbaijan where Charles Leclerc put in a brilliant lap.

Ferrari, Aston and Mercedes all started approximately 0.5–0.8s slower than Red Bull at the start of the season and in the first couple of races, it was only Ferrari who could come close to a fight in qualifying pace.

However, Ferrari would soon give up this edge to improve their race pace performance. Alpine also made a decent start being the fifth fastest team, while McLaren found themselves all the way back being the worst car on the grid for the first three races.

Aero developments flocking in

As the season progressed, teams started flocking in their Aero Developments. Some made more impact than others in closing the gap while others slipped away. Let us look at the Performance Gainers and Losers.

Consistent Constructors

Ferrari impressively, has had some of the fewest updates on the grid to date and has had consistently the second-fastest car over a single lap. However, their single-lap pace has not transformed as consistently in the race which has led to them losing ground eventually in the races, thus reflecting their constructor's position. They have been particularly struggling with tyre wear and race weekends which have been hot.

Performance Gainers

Mercedes' upgrades and subsequent mid-season aero-philosophy switch have clearly brought performance to the car. We can see them drastically closing the gap to Red Bull from Monaco when they brought a big aero update.

The Silver Arrows have been particularly adept at improving their front-end sensitivity with a suspension layout change, as well as their rear-end stability by improving the flow delivery to the rear of the car which has given confidence to the drivers to push over a single hot lap.

McLaren has also seen significant improvement after upgrades to their car since race four, an impressive feat given where they started the season. They went from being the slowest car at the start of the season to being the second-fastest car before the summer break.

This shows the potential teams can unlock if they choose the right development strategy.

Noises from the McLaren garage suggest that they understood some new aero mechanism to play with which has allowed them to run the car much lower to the ground resulting in an overall performance gain around every type of corner.

However, McLaren’s particular weakness has been their straight-line speed. They arguably have the worst straight-line speed compared to their competitors which is something they will have to solve with their updates if they want to continue being the second fastest team on the grid.

Performance Losers

Aston Martin had the most impressive start to the season but have been consistently falling behind their nearest competitors in Mercedes and Ferrari.

We can see that as their competitors started bringing the upgrades, since the Miami Grand Prix they started falling behind them. It's been Fernando Alonso’s consistency and race awareness that has still allowed them to score top five finishes even with the fourth fastest car since race five.

Key takeaways

Behind Red Bull, the season has been a tight one, especially the last five races.

We go into every race weekend not knowing which will be the second-fastest car. Ferrari is rumoured to be bringing 0.4s worth of upgrades for the rest of the season, while Mercedes has stated that their focus will be on the next year's car after the summer break.

McLaren is on a high and are tipped to have a 0.2s boost on the way, while all eyes are on Aston Martin as they have promised a big upgrade after the F1 hiatus ends as they bid to get back into the fight with their competitors.

Shubham Sangodkar is a former F1 Aerodynamicist with a Master's in Racing Car Design specialising in F1 Aerodynamics and F1 Data Analysis. He also posts aerodynamics content on his YouTube channel, which can be found here.

CodeF1 is a freelance data scientist using machine learning/AI, game theory and data analytics to understand Formula 1 data. You can follow them on Instagram, Twitter and Youtube, which can be found here.

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