With the launch season now fully under way, itv.com/f1 columnist Mark Hughes pinpoints the key challenges the teams faced in designing their 2009 cars following the biggest shake-up of Formula 1’s technical regulations in at least 15 years.

He looks at how Ferrari, Toyota and McLaren have responded to those challenges and finds that, despite starting with a blank sheet of paper, the teams have not abandoned their respective design priorities and the new cars bear many of the hallmarks of their ancestors.

Mark also explains how Ferrari has cleverly exploited a loophole in the bodywork regulations, highlighting the tension between F1 teams’ new-found role as major players in the rule-making process and their age-old competitive instincts.


Ferrari, Toyota and McLaren-Mercedes have all now shown their 2009 cars.

The tone of the launches varied from anxious (Ferrari), to hopeful (Toyota) and confident (McLaren). Time will tell which, if any, were justified.

McLaren’s Ron Dennis – presiding over his final McLaren new car launch as team principal – emphasised just what a massive change the 2009 regulations represent.

“[The rules] required the technologists in our organisation…to go back to a plain piece of paper and conceptualise what the fundamental requirements are for the regulations," he said.

“It is there you can get it wrong because if you get it wrong no amount of development can sort it out.

“What you see in the MP4-24 is a car correctly conceptualised.”


The key challenges

Perhaps the biggest challenge of the new regulations – especially so with the ban on in-season testing – is getting the baseline weight distribution right to get the best from the new slick tyres.

The introduction of KERS energy recovery devices costs weight that was previously used for movable ballast.

As such the teams now have far less scope than before to use the ballast to get the ideal weight distribution for any given circuit.

But knowing what that ideal distribution is when they have run only the bare minimum of testing on the new tyres is extremely challenging.

McLaren, with its super-sophisticated tyre modelling software – a programme it initiated almost 10 years ago – is confident it has fully understood the new requirements.

It also seems significantly more confident about its KERS device than either Ferrari or Toyota.

Ferrari’s initial testing of its new car, the F60, was compromised by technical glitches with the KERS system and even before the launch it was frankly admitting that it was further behind in its development of the technology than it wanted to be.

Toyota does not even have its device fitted yet and will almost certainly be starting the season without it, thus potentially surrendering a few tenths of lap time.

Change and continuity

As befits the radically new aerodynamic regulations, all three cars look considerably different to their 2008 predecessors.

But look past the new shovel front wings and bizarre tall, narrow rear wings and you see design detail that marks out a continuation of themes for each team.

The McLaren MP4-24, for example, continues to make use of the maximum allowable front wing plan area while the other two do not.

Despite totally new front wing regulations, the McLaren continues to follow the path of having more wing flaps than the others too.

Although this actually loses you some potential downforce-producing surface area, the small gaps in between the flaps (known as slot gaps) allow any excess airflow to bleed away, thereby preventing the wing from stalling.

It implies a car that should be easier to set up, more tolerant of different ride heights and bumps – just like the McLarens of the last two years.

By contrast, both the Ferrari F60 and Toyota TF109 have one-flap front wings, though in the case of the Ferrari there are extra elements on the outer edges of the wings above the flaps.

These effectively do the same job as the previous ‘bridge’ wing elements we saw on many 2008 cars, but which are now outlawed.

They give some extra downforce at the outer extremities of the wing but without tampering with the flow back to the sensitive barge board area further back.

That barge board area is where the Ferrari has apparently stolen a march on its rivals.

Some have suggested that the tall vertical fin ahead of the F60’s sidepods that doubles up as a wing mirror support is against the spirit of the ’09 regulations, which were supposed to have put an end to such devices in the interests of creating a cleaner wake and therefore making overtaking easier.

A section of bodywork zones was created in the regulations in which such devices were outlawed.

But Ferrari, by moving the sidepods further back, has created a narrow ‘blind spot’ not covered in the regulations, into which it has inserted this fin that in the process of creating more downforce will also give it a more choppy airflow wake.

It’s a classic example of how teams will always be pushing the envelope of legality, even when they themselves have been part of the rule-making process.

We’ll just have to wait and see if ‘pulling a fast one’ is in this case the same as creating a fast one.

With such radically different regs and little opportunity to test, the previous formbook may be of little relevance.