So it’s no wonder that McLaren and Alpine, who are vying for the honor in the chase, are both pushing car development hard

Both teams have brought upgrades of the same magnitude to Azerbaijan, which appear to improve the overall performance of their cars relative to other teams.

As part of two update packages they made changes to the design of the floor, doing a lot of work on the underside of the floor to help improve the flow through the tunnel and maximize the work done by the diffuser.

Although this area is hidden from view, we can still appreciate how visible changes to the top surface have an impact on what lies below.

McLaren MCL60 floor comparison

Photography: unconfirmed

In McLaren’s case, the changes made appear at first glance to be only for the floor edges and edge wings, but changes in clarity and contour have been made to the entire surface of the floor.

This includes the height of the front floor blister (red arrow), which will directly affect the shape of the tunnel and the slats below.

At the same time, the section of the floor surrounding the lower side impact beam has been modified, with a crescent-shaped blister shrink-wrapped around the safety structure to tighten the body of the floor (green arrow).

At the rear of the floor, it can be clearly seen that the interface between the sidepods and the kick on the ramp has also been re-characterized to take advantage of the changes made upstream (purple arrows).

The slender fringe wing was also ditched in favor of a shorter variant that still includes the roll section (blue arrow). The three vanes previously used here are retained, but reshaped and reoriented to better manage airflow passage.

In front of the rear tires, the floor cutout has been retained from which now protrudes a small horizontal fin (white arrow) which is a design feature we’ve seen others deploy with these new regulations as it helps regulate airflow after reaching Passage before the tire.

Consequently, the rear of the floor was also modified to take better advantage of the new flow structure created in front of it.

Alpine A523 floor comparison

Photography: unconfirmed

The changes made by Alpine are not extensive, but may be just as beneficial from a performance point of view, as they are optimizations of the design language already present in the old specification.

The middle flap, formed by two cuts on either side, now has its leading edge curl facing the ground, rather than away from it, while the surface geometry of the flap has also been adjusted.

The floor has since been profiled slightly differently to take advantage of the previous alterations (green arrows) and to further modify the flow structure received by the floor cutouts, horizontal blade fins and floor cleft areas, which have also taken a new form (blue arrow).

Red Bull Racing RB19 sidepod comparison, Azerbaijan Grand Prix

photographer: George Piola

Red Bull has also deployed a new floor in Azerbaijan as it revised the design to take advantage of modifications made to the RB19 sidepods.

The redesign of the sidepods has centered around the size of the air intakes, widening the aperture but lowering the height to improve cooling efficiency, while increasing the size of the undercut for the aerodynamic payoff that doing so provides.

The perimeter fence has been redesigned (highlighted in yellow), the shape of the front upper corner has been changed, while the first step of the descent has been increased.

At the same time, the depth of the scroll at the edge of the floor increases (red arrow), which causes the stand to also have to move around (blue arrow).

The chords of the floor edge wings have also been increased (yellow arrows) to better help support the aerodynamic effect the designers were after.

Red Bull RB19 floor fence and floor edge comparison

Photography: unconfirmed