F1 aero expert explains CRUCIAL rear wing choices for Italian Grand Prix

F1 Analysis

F1 aero expert explains CRUCIAL rear wing choices for Italian Grand Prix

Former Red Bull aero expert Shubham Sangodkar runs the rule over Red Bull's setup

Shubham Sangodkar

Saturday 2 September 2023 12:27

Monza – the temple of speed – is one of the most power-sensitive track on the F1 calendar. This means a team needs to optimise its setup to a low drag configuration rather than a high downforce configuration, since there is more lap time in the high-speed corners and the straights.

Sector 1 and Sector 3 are low drag, while Sector 2 has medium-speed and high-speed corners. The challenge is in setting up a car which has high top speed but maintains a balanced rear end for braking and high-speed corner stability, which gives the best laptime. Let us look at how Red Bull tests its two rear wing options to decide exactly that.

Aero Options

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Red Bull have by far the best aero efficiency on the grid, so they have more leverage to run a draggy rear wing compared to their competition while not losing out on the straights. In the photo below, you can see how much flatter the Ferrari and McLaren rear wing mainplane is as compared to Red Bull rear wing.

Red Bull came with two rear wing flap options, which they tested in FP1. Max Verstappen had the draggier, high downforce rear wing while Sergio Perez had a rear wing in which the rear flap was cut out – with the installation of some gurneys to avoid premature flow separation for a trimmed flap (just an aero trick). Let us look at the data to understand which rear-wing option they decided to stick with for FP2.

FP1 Data

From FP1 data we can see that Perez, with the lower drag rear wing, is faster across all the straights by about 4-7 km/h compared to Verstappen. He gains about 2-3 tenths on the straights, but his team-mate gains more than 0.5 sec in the corners with his package in Sector 2 and is able to maintain the advantage in Sector 3 by having better exits out of corners.

This clearly indicates that the fastest way around the track is with Verstappen's package. However, F1 teams always play tricks to ensure they don't show their full hand. Looking at the exit of the last turn we can see that he has pretty much run out of his battery, while Perez seems to have quite a bit in stock.

This indicates that there was more lap time available for Perez if he had unleashed his battery pack. How much? Probably within a tenth of Verstappen.

FP2 Data

Red Bull however decided to go with the less draggy option on both cars in FP2 to do their qualifying and long runs. Why? This is because of the track characteristics of Monza, and what their competitors were doing. From the graph below, we can see that Ferrari have the highest top speed thanks to their skinny rear wing and their new power unit.

Monza, while having long straights, is notoriously hard to overtake at because of the corners that lead up to the long straights and the profile of the corners after the long straights.

So while Red Bull wants to be the fastest in qualifying, they need to be able to account for race situations in case they land up behind a Ferrari – for example – which with its top speed advantage would be hard to overtake.

One example scenario is Ferrari deciding to tow each other, which would provide about 0.2 sec around Monza if done correctly. That could absolutely land them on pole.

The graph below shows the spread of top speed in the field in FP1 and FP2. Notice how significantly quicker Verstappen and Charles Leclerc got in FP2 compared to FP1. Another interesting observation is that McLaren, who previously had the lowest top speed of the five fastest teams, seem to have faster top speed than Mercedes this weekend.

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.