New blast in F1 wind tunnel wars: Aston & McLaren's latest tech

“And there just wasn’t the gap between the front wing width and the tunnel width, and the same in our case between the tunnel height and the top of the rear wing.”

McLaren had a disastrous start to 2009 with the MP4-24, admittedly in a year when Brawn’s double diffuser moved the goalpost. But by the middle of the season the silver car was a race winner.

“The front wing trend then, with the way the front wing worked, was you had to massively ‘out sweep’,” says Lowe. “We could put such a wing in our tunnel and it looked shit. So we were found out with that.

“So as the trend showed, the quick guys had this outswept front wing endplate. We had to copy that blindly.

“It didn’t look good in the tunnel, but we just made it and put it on the car, and it worked. So we always thought we had to develop blindly against the tunnel’s numbers. So that was part of the recovery.

“And that’s why after that McLaren went and rented the tunnel in Toyota eventually, and we stopped using our own tunnel, because it was just too small. And Ferrari did a big upgrade on their tunnel, likewise.”

Aside from McLaren’s new toy there are seven other tunnels currently operated by F1 teams, with Mercedes in Brackley also serving Aston Martin, and the Red Bull facility in Bedford shared with RB/VCARB.

All have been in use for a while, albeit subject to the occasional upgrade or complete revamp – for example Ferrari’s was substantially renewed around 2017, and Alpine’s had a makeover in 2018.

Typically tunnels also get the equivalent of an MOT service during the summer break, but major works are always disruptive, because it would mean either stopping the tunnel programme or temporarily taking it elsewhere. Which is why in general teams have upgraded their existing kit, as the opportunity to start completely fresh is so rare.

McLaren was able to do just that because it had been using Cologne for years and thus could take its time to do a complete rebuild of its old one in Woking.

Aston Martin goes all-out on new factory and wind tunnel – as Red Bull struggles

Meanwhile Aston Martin had the space on its new Silverstone site to create something brand spanking new, and with no compromises, while it continued to use the Mercedes tunnel. The new one should be ready to accept the 2026 model when aero testing for the new regulations is allowed from January 1.

Aston won’t be the only team to benefit from starting with a clean sheet of paper on an empty site, as Red Bull will have a new tunnel at some stage in 2026 – and it can’t come soon enough for a team that is currently on the ropes.

In the space of a few months RBR has gone from dominating races to struggling – and a key issue is a lack of correlation from tunnel to track, as team boss Christian Horner made clear after a poor race in Monza last weekend.

“I think you have to pick your tools,” he said. “CFD and wind tunnel data, obviously it’s not unusual that when something’s not working on the car, you end up with a different reading from your simulation tools, and they don’t converge.

“Then you get three sets of data. You get CFD, you get wind tunnel, and you get track. Obviously, the one that really counts is the track data, but to develop it, it’s like telling the time with three different watches.

“You’ve got to focus on the tool that’s going to give you the most valuable input. And of course, the track data is the most reliable.”

As Paddy Lowe noted Red Bull currently uses a tunnel whose roots are prehistoric by F1 standards. One of four built in the fifties at the former Royal Aircraft Establishment base in Bedford, and known within that organisation as the “13ft x 9ft low speed wind tunnel”, it has of course been upgraded with modern technology over the decades. However, it still represents a massive compromise.

Red Bull recognised that a while ago, and after some planning permission issues were overcome a new facility will come on stream in Milton Keynes at some point in 2026.

Horner is loathe to use the current tunnel as the main excuse for the RB20’s problems, but equally he doesn’t exonerate it completely.

“I think that that the wind tunnel has its limitations,” said Horner. “Which is why we’ve invested in a new tunnel. But it’s what we’ve got, and we have to make use of it. I think that the wind tunnel is perhaps a contributor, but it’s not the reason behind where we are.”

Aston Martin has also struggled to find form of late, and hopes are pegged on the new tunnel, the first no-compromise brand new F1 facility built from scratch in many years.

“At the moment we’re using the Mercedes wind tunnel, which is a good tunnel, but is obviously not in the same headquarters,” says engineering director Luca Furbatto. “And we tend to run it during the weekend, which is sub-optimal.

“If I’m not wrong the last wind tunnel that was developed in F1 was 20 years ago, and so there’s been a lot of technology change during that time. Imagine, in terms of flow visualisation, there are tools nowadays that didn’t exist 20 years ago.

“Arguably you could take a wind tunnel of 20 years ago and upgrade it with new technology, but it’s never the same as if you start with a brand new one – how would you do it? What’s the best out there? Which is I think is what we’ve done.”

“McLaren is quite interesting because their wind tunnel, I was there at the time, I think they did it in 1997 or ’98.

“At one point they stopped using it, and went to Cologne, and they took the opportunity to redo it, and they went back I think a year ago. And I think they probably can see the benefit right now in their wind tunnel.”

McLaren’s tentative approach pays off in 2024

Does McLaren boss Andrea Stella agree that the tunnel has been key to the team’s upsurge in form and ability to consistently introduce upgrades that work?

Intriguingly he suggests that the team has been careful to only bring parts that it was fully confident in.

“I think there’s multiple factors to consider,” he noted at Monza. “First of all, we haven’t brought a significant upgrade since Miami. Actually the next relevant upgrade, not as big as Miami, was in Zandvoort, and it didn’t involve the floor, it was just a detail. It was some other areas of the car.

“And there’s a reason why we haven’t brought some upgrades because we see that had we pressed the go-button, we might have had some doubt when these parts were tested on full scale on the real car. Kind of we are taking our time to convince ourselves that the development is mature, to be taken trackside. This is what I can say about the way we are working.

“I think in terms of the wind tunnel, it does help, the fact that we can lean on a new wind tunnel, to the latest technology, because we are dealing with complex aerodynamics.

“I think the evolution of these cars has led to some challenging physics, and I think that’s where other teams, including McLaren, are kind of struggling to easily generate developments.”

However, he makes a perfectly valid point – any tools are only as good as the craftsmen who use them.

“I think more than the wind tunnel, ultimately, if we have a competitive car on track, it is to the merit of the entire aerodynamic team.

“There’s no tool that does the job itself. A tool is a tool as such, because it’s used by humans. So for me, the praise goes to the aerodynamic team that since we started the work last year, they have been able to achieve such a success rate in terms of development.

“This doesn’t carry us away. We know that it’s tricky. We do want to take some more development track side, but we know that we have to be cautious, that we might face a similar situation.

“So far, it has been successful, great merit from our aerodynamic team, but we will try and bring some more upgrades, and we will see if we face the same kind of issues.”

As noted earlier Aston Martin and Red Bull also have new tunnels coming on stream, both built on green field sites and with no compromises, and one could speculate that all three teams will see the benefits over the next couple of years.

Those still relying on older facilities that have been upgraded over the years are no doubt confident that they can still do a good a job.

However, if a brand-new tunnel makes your aero programme even one per cent more effective, that’s surely a gain worth having, especially as the sport transitions into another new set of regulations in 2026.

And in Aston’s case it won’t hurt if the craftsman taking advantage of the new tools is none other than Adrian Newey…