A launch red herring or a design dead end?

When Valtteri Bottas took the new car out of the garage in Barcelona for the first time, it was running a completely different floor to the original renders from when it was revealed.

On the real car, it was a much more traditional edge compared to the radical serrated side that had been present on launch day. In fact, so unique was the jagged floor that it looked like the sort of thing that would be used as a tyre cutter in Wacky Races.

The absence of this bold design has prompted some intrigue about whether the squad has deliberately revealed a red herring to distract the opposition for a few days, or it was an unintentional consequence of a design path that was considered early on but later abandoned.

We may have to wait for some answers from the technical chiefs at the first test to find out the truth.

What’s interesting about the serrated solution seen on the C43 is that whilst it seems out of the norm for an F1 car, it is actually a perfectly acceptable approach to dealing with these regulations.

It could therefore easily have been an early example of what the team worked on when looking into the new 2023 rule changes, and there didn’t seem much need to update the renders for the launch if it had gone off in a different direction.

From a legality perspective, the vertical flap and the nine winglets attached to it appear to obey the regulations laid out for the floor edge and the ‘edge wing’, with the vertical flap they are anchored to being aided by the brackets that are also allowed.

Other than the winglets being mounted upon the vertical flap, there were two interesting side effects to note in this solution.

Firstly, on the left, we can see that the flap would provide a corridor for the airflow between it and the sidepod’s flank.

Secondly, on the right, we can see that the flap is mounted above the floor edge’s level (dotted yellow line to help show the separation), with the brackets allowing the airflow a route with which to circulate to the outside of the flap.

For now, that floor has not appeared on the car, with the version at the shakedown being a more benign solution that appeared to have far more in common with the designs seen throughout 2022.

There’s design inspiration from up and down the grid within this floor edge arrangement too, from the Gurney-like flick-ups first seen on the Red Bull, to the scythe-shaped edge wing on the Mercedes, to the rear cut-out and wing jutting out from beneath the Ferrari.

Given the…