Tracking the trends of car development in 2022 · RaceFans

The new regulations for Formula 1 this year created a unique opportunity for ten very different looking cars to line up on the grid in Bahrain at the start of the season.

Each team had their own design philosophy and took different design approaches to the new set of regulatuions. However, over the course of the season, some of these concepts have shown clear advantages and many of the cars on the grid have started to converge into a handful of particular design philosophies.

Sidepod concepts

The three main sidepod design philosophies that had emerged at the beginning of the season were the inwash, downwash, and outwash concepts.

Mercedes and McLaren had notably taken the inwash concept where, from the top view of the car, the rear of the coke bottle section narrows inwards into the rear bodywork without a very aggressive undercut on the sidepods, making for a rather short sidepod. The inwash concept is designed for the air to hug the bodywork around the sidepod and be directed over the top of the diffuser.

By reducing the frontal area of the car, the concept should allow for lower drag overall. While Mercedes has created a radical version of this concept with their ‘slimline’ sidepods and various fairings to help guide airflow, McLaren has since moved away from this philosophy and embraced the downwash concept.

Red Bull and Alpha Tauri were the champions of the downwash concept with very aggressive downwash sidepods from their launch specifications. Red Bull doubled down with their downwash concept on the last day of Bahrain testing, introducing updated sidepods with further aggressive undercuts, and have run this specification ever since.

With the rapid pace of the RB18, and as the team has seemingly got ‘porpoising’ under control, many other the teams have switched their development paths to the downwash concept. McLaren made a gradual transition of their concept with a more downwash-oriented update introduced during the Spanish GP and then a clear downwash concept sidepod update at the French GP.

Notably, Aston Martin introduced a heavily downwash oriented concept at the Spanish Grand Prix that was quickly dubbed as the ‘Green Red Bull’ by the media and the fans. While the Silverstone-based team does have a history of making cars that look similar to others on the grid (recall the ‘Pink Mercedes’ of 2020), this was…