It was only a few years ago that some of Formula 1’s brightest minds were predicting a future where wind tunnels were no longer needed. Think of the wasted expense powering a giant fan in a massive, empty room filled with nothing but a 60% scale model of a car, and all the time spent poring through the data readouts.

It seemed that technological progress was reaching a cross-over point, one where computer simulations could do all of that and accurately – and effectively – predict flow patterns around a car.

And here we are, the year 2024 of the common era, and two F1 teams are in the process of either building or finalising brand-spanking-new wind tunnel designs. Aston Martin is in the commissioning phase of its new in-house facility, while Red Bull is aiming to have a new wind tunnel in operation by 2026. McLaren, for its part, had finished its own new build in 2023.

The anticipation for both incoming wind tunnels among the teams will be stratospheric. These are often held up as a significant influence on performance, one that can change the fortunes of a team and stall any hints of a decline. But, as ever, it’s not quite as simple as that – even after construction, there are months of work ahead before the wind tunnel is even remotely useable.

In those months, there will be significant challenges in getting the wind tunnels ship-shape. Aston Martin is already delving into those, while Red Bull will have to go through the entire rigmarole in about 12 months’ time when it moves out of its Bedford tunnel – which dates to the Cold War as part of an aeronautical research site.

These are the challenges we don’t hear about; the narrative always seems to lean towards the following phraseology: “Team X has a new wind tunnel, it’ll work off the bat and the car will be competitive”. Let’s set the record straight and explain how to set up a wind tunnel, and detail the work that Aston Martin and Red Bull have ahead.

Alain Prost, Ferrari, Jean-Claude Migeot

Photo by: Ercole Colombo

To do that, we’ve asked former F1 aerodynamicist Jean-Claude Migeot – formerly of Tyrrell and Ferrari, and the architect of F1’s high-nose era – to assist. Migeot has been heavily involved in the development of multiple wind tunnels over his post-F1 career, including the Aerolab and Fondtech facilities in Italy, so he’s the perfect person to help us untangle the key details.

“First of all, I don’t think you get benefits straight away,” Migeot begins. “You have to build confidence. A wind tunnel is not reality, it’s a laboratory. So, you have to trust it behaves like a laboratory, which means if you’re ever going to repeat something, it’s that the results are going to repeat perfectly.

“That’s the minimum required, and then [you build] confidence between the real thing and your simulation in the wind tunnel, and it takes some time to build that confidence. But it depends on the background of the people using it.”

In this, he cites the example of McLaren switching to its new wind tunnel – ending its reliance on the Toyota facilities in Cologne – and the perceived impact that this had on the Woking team. This coincided with the team’s upward mobility in 2023, as upgrades took the team from one floundering in the mid-pack to one fighting at the sharp end of the grid. Building the wind tunnel is only the first step.

Once the building has been completed, with all monitoring equipment installed, the tunnel then needs to go through what’s known as ‘commissioning’, and that’s before the work can even start with a wind tunnel calibration model. It’s a lengthy process, and one that Aston Martin is currently mired within as it hopes to get its tunnel working in time for the 2025 season.

“Step zero is commissioning,” Migeot explains. “This is where you have to check what has been sold to you is effectively achieved. You know, the air distribution, the turbulence, the temperature control, which is hugely important.

“You have to run the tunnel in all conditions and first check your builder has done a good job, then run all the electronics for the control [units]. It’s a huge work for a group of people and is taking at least one month. And then if that’s okay – because if that’s not okay, you are fixing something which is not hours, but days and weeks of changes – then you start to work with the model.”

Zak Brown, Lando Norris and Andrea Stella in the new wind tunnel at the McLaren Technology Centre

Photo by: McLaren

Explaining commissioning and correlation

Formula 1’s current ruleset is now into its third year, and the increased competitiveness of the 2024 field has demonstrated the level of convergence that is starting to be achieved with steady regulations. Teams are having to dig deeper to find lucrative opportunities to improve, but this is leading a number of teams to encounter correlation issues between the wind tunnel and their on-track findings.

For example, a new floor tested in the wind tunnel might churn out data that suggests it would be an upgrade worthy of entering the production phase for a future race. Once ready, the team tries it over a race weekend – but it either fails to offer the promised downforce gains or, more alarmingly, creates instability in the car.

There are a few notable examples of this happening over 2024. Ferrari went through a mid-season phase of floor iterations that progressively worsened high-speed bouncing through corners, while Aston Martin’s Imola upgrade made the car much harder for the drivers to handle. RB and Mercedes have both rolled back on floor upgrades, and Red Bull’s updates mid-season took a long time to untangle after introducing a variety of balance issues.

The catch-all explanation is that it’s a correlation problem and, at surface level, this is correct. Some of that is down to how a wind tunnel is calibrated, and perhaps there are losses somewhere in the tunnel that make it hard to achieve the right figure. Take Renault’s 2007 decline, for example; the then-reigning champion team appeared to suffer with its switch from Michelin to Bridgestone tyres due to the change in tyre profile.

Migeot explains that a tunnel doesn’t have to be perfectly calibrated to what is experienced on track, but the difference between the tunnel and real-world readings must be consistent.

“The tunnel will not give you the truth. It will give you something which, in the best scenario, is consistent with reality. If you have a quite fixed difference between reality and the tunnel, that’s fine; it can’t be identical. If you’re confident that, when you improve in the tunnel, you know it’s going to improve on the track, you’re saving a huge amount of time.

Sergio Perez, Red Bull Racing RB20

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

“I hear this doesn’t work very much like that for many, the upgrades are brought to the track and then they return to the old configuration quite often these days. So I think a lot of teams are in correlation problems.”

So, can you ever achieve perfect correlation? “It’s endless, it’s a quest you never finish,” Migeot states. “You’re in a happy situation when you have confidence, but the situation can change quickly, and it would be radically changed by these rules of two years ago with a completely new floor.

“There’s many imperfections, like in the rubber tyres (on the model), maybe you don’t have the right tyre profile under yaw, there are many compromises and there’s maybe a hundred differences which you cannot have in the tunnel. You try your best and, if these things are kept to a very small influence, you’re okay.

“Then you are in the case of a fixed error, and you can make your development and improvements. But if suddenly one of these things becomes influential on the results, and you are again in correlation work. For example, a change of tyre dimension is not very often these days, but even the rubber state between new and used can make a difference on the track.

“All these things you have to collect, and it takes time. So it’s an endless subject. I think you have people on that all the time, measuring what’s happened on the track. If it’s only in some occasions you don’t correlate, it doesn’t stop you. But when you see a car which is on the front row on one race, and on the third or fourth row on the next race, then you have a problem.”

F1 Academy points leader Abbi Pulling finished fastest in the all-female Formula E test at the Jarama circuit on Friday.

The all-electric championship held a test exclusively for female drivers with all 11 Formula E teams required to field at least one driver, as 18 in total sampled the new Gen3 Evo machines.

Pulling, who can clinch the F1 Academy title at the next round in Qatar which would give her a fully-funded drive in the UK’s GB3 Championship next season, posted a 1m30.889s inside the final 60 minutes of the three-hour session.

The outing was her first time in a Formula E car, and after just one session her best lap left her just 4.5 seconds behind the quickest time from the four-day pre-season test, which was set by Jaguar’s Mitch Evans on Friday morning.

Three-time W Series champion Jamie Chadwick finished second, her final effort leaving her 0.320s behind Pulling.

The 26-year-old Briton, who also completed the most laps during the session with 39, previously tested Formula E machinery with Jaguar during the 2020 rookie test and will conduct the same test next season.

The female drivers

Photo by: Malcolm Griffiths / Motorsport Images

McLaren’s Bianca Bustamante became the first driver to dip below the 1m32s barrier during the second hour, and the F1 Academy driver finished the session third, 0.826s behind Pulling.

Miki Koyama also improved with her final effort to move into fourth for Lola, from Sauber Academy driver Lena Buhler (Mahindra) as Beitske Visser completed the top six for DS Penske.

Running in the final hour was curtailed after F1 Academy driver Jessica Edgar found the barriers in Jean-Eric Vergne’s DS Penske at Turn 3, which brought out a red flag as the car was recovered to the pits.

Simona de Silvestro returned to Formula E action having competed in 12 races between 2014-2016 during the Gen1 era with Andretti.

The Swiss-Italian, who has been a reserve driver for Porsche in Formula E, was driving for customer team Kiro but only completed six laps due to technical problems.

Jaguar’s second driver, Lilou Wadoux was the only driver unable to complete a lap at all as problems with her seat meant she was unable to take to the circuit.

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has opened up on details surrounding Lewis Hamilton’s shock move to Ferrari – and how he got an early tip-off from Carlos Sainz Sr.

Hamilton told Wolff during a visit to his house at the end of January that he would be activating an exit clause in his Mercedes contract and joining Ferrari for the 2025 season.

But while Hamilton’s announcement was the first official confirmation that Wolff had of his driver’s departure, he has now spoken at length about how he had been alerted to the prospect for a little while.

Speaking to the High Performance podcast, Wolff said that an initial call from Sainz Sr., father of the Ferrari driver Carlos that Hamilton is replacing, had been where he first got word that something was in the offing.

“So I heard the bells ringing two weeks before,” said Wolff. “Yeah, the old man Sainz called me and said, this is what’s happening.

“And then there were a few drivers’ dads rang me up that didn’t before. So I thought, Okay…there’s something going on there.

“And then I sent a text to [Ferrari boss] Fred Vasseur saying: ‘You’re taking our driver?’ Didn’t get any response. Very unusual for Fred. He’s a good friend. So yeah, I saw it coming.”

With his suspicion about the intention of Hamilton’s visit to his house, Wolff also revealed that he threw a curveball into their chat by first telling the seven-time champion about Mercedes having signed former Ferrari chief designer Simone Resta.

Toto Wolff, Team Principal and CEO, Mercedes-AMG, with Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes-AMG

Photo by: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images

“When Lewis arrived in the house, like he did so many years before, we had a bit of a small talk, like we always do about the Christmas holidays and all of that,” explained Wolff.

“Then I said, “Well, we’re recruiting from Ferrari now. We got this guy.” And Lewis was, “Oh, there’s something I need to tell you.” And yeah, when he said that, that initial moment was a little bit of… so this is really happening?”

When news of Hamilton’s Ferrari decision was made public, it became one of the biggest shock news events of recent F1 history.

But Wolff said that he was able to deal with the situation in quite a calm manner.

“Well, I had much worse in my life, happening, like real drama and trauma,” he said. “This is not even moving the needle.”

He added: “It’s just a new situation. It has risks and opportunities, risks in the sense of how do I inform the sponsors as quickly as possible? Because it was leaking… And on the other side, what are we doing about next year?”

Wolff also made it clear that there was no temptation from his side to try to persuade Hamilton to change his mind.

“I think if someone decides to go, then you need to let them go,” he said. “I had a chat with Pep Guardiola a long time ago, and he is a friend. I said, ‘What do you do if this and that player leaves?’ And he said, ‘What do you mean I do?’ I said, ‘Well, do you try to convince them to stay?’

“He said: ‘No, if somebody thinks he can play elsewhere better or earns more – you have just got to let them go.’ And it is something that I embrace in the same way here. Somebody wants to go – then let’s make it as good as possible for each of the parties.”

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Jorge Martin feels he and Pramac have been fighting “against the world” in MotoGP this year, with his rival Francesco Bagnaia racing for a factory Ducati team that is “built to win”.

Martin is on the verge of winning the MotoGP world title having carved out a 24-point lead with just 37 on offer in next week’s Barcelona season finale.

Satellite teams have traditionally been at a massive disadvantage with respect to factory squads in the past, but Ducati has overhauled the way bike manufacturers compete in MotoGP in the last few years by forging a closer relationship with teams it supplies bikes to.

As part of its new methodology, Martin is contracted directly to Ducati and rides the same specification of GP24 as Bagnaia and Enea Bastianini in the factory team, thus offering him parity of equipment.

However, while the lines between satellite and factory teams have become blurred in recent years, Pramac remains an independent outfit and doesn’t have the same resources as that of a manufacturer.

It’s why the significance of winning a title against a factory rider is not lost on Martin, who could wrap up the championship as early as the sprint race in Barcelona.

“He’s in a different moment, he’s been in MotoGP for six years, he’s in an official team, he has everything, his environment, ready to win,” said the Spaniard.

“I have a team of 12 people who fight alone against the world, and with that to achieve what we have achieved, seven sprint [wins], three victories and 30 podiums [15 in races and another 15 in sprints], I can’t ask for more.

“[The success] is not because of me, it’s because of my people, my environment, my team, all the people around me, I just want to achieve it for them, so that they can enjoy it, that’s what fills me [with joy] and excites me.”

Francesco Bagnaia, Ducati Team, Jorge Martin, Pramac Racing

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

Bagnaia has established himself as one of the best riders of the generation after winning back-to-back titles in 2022 and ’23 with Ducati.

The Italian has put up a strong fight against Martin this year, winning 10 of the 19 grands prix so far and scoring six further victories in the sprints.

Martin stressed that winning the 2024 title would carry extra value just because he would have defeated an in-form – if error-prone – Bagnaia to the crown.

“It is a pride to reach this point of the season fighting for the championship,” he said. “It’s a pride to have a rival like Bagnaia, because this makes me better.

“That Pecco is at his highest level and being able to fight with him, to be able to push him to the limit, makes what we are both doing more valuable.

“I’ve won seven times this year, true, but it will be very difficult in the last grand prix to beat a Pecco in the form he is in now.

“We’ll see how the weekend develops, it will be in colder conditions, which usually suits me better. With a lot of heat it’s a perfect condition for Bagnaia. There will be more chances of failing in lower temperatures, but the risk will be the same for both of us.

“It’s always difficult to play for a title in the last event, anything can happen. But I arrive confident and believing that I can achieve it.”

The recent changes to Formula 1’s technical regulations for 2026 will give teams more freedom to explore different design concepts, says Williams chief James Vowles.

Recently, the rules prescribing F1’s new car designs for 2026 have been tweaked following concerns that the new generation of cars would be too slow.

The new cars, which will be paired to overhauled engine regulations with a bigger reliance on electric energy, will have significantly less drag and wake turbulence to improve the racing, but the latest version of the rules has increased the amount of downforce they will generate to bring cornering speeds closer to current levels.

The FIA relaxed limitations around the front wing area and the front floor, with scope to add bargeboards, and the size of the diffuser has been increased compared to the draft that was presented to teams in June and received mixed reviews.

The changes were welcomed by the teams, not just because of the increase in performance but because there will now be more freedom for designers to explore different concepts. That could lead to cars that are visibly much more different across the grid compared to the current generation of ground-effect-based machinery, where teams soon converged on very similar concepts.

“We now have more freedom where you could see a different direction that you’re going in,” Vowles said. “So there’s more flow controlling devices in place, which lead to downforce, but differentiation between teams. What’s been really positive as well is there’s still some small areas of improvement around the diffuser.

“What’s great to see is teams in F1 working hand-in-hand in order to improve that, because every time you make a change like that, it has some consequences.

“I think what you’re going to see now is instead of all teams working in the same few millimetres, there’ll be some different concepts. I personally think that is good for the sport.”

F1 2026 FIA car renders

Photo by: FIA

Vowles’ McLaren counterpart Andrea Stella also felt giving engineers more freedom will lead to a bigger spread of designs.

“With the recent release of the car geometry, especially from an aerodynamic point of view, basically two main things have been achieved,” he explained. “One is a much higher downforce level, and the second one is more freedom. We welcome both.

“We welcome more freedom. I think this will give teams the possibility to just use their knowledge, use their methodologies. The knowledge that has been accrued over the years, even if with different regulations, is a way of creating some differentiation.

“So, we’ve always been advocating this kind of approach and we welcome the fact that there will be more freedom.”