Formula One - 2010

Predictions? Wishes?

I predict Lewis Hamilton will beat Jensen Button so badly Button will start to claim 'team preference' type stuff.

I hope, hope, hope Williams have some success this year. Especially since old man Barichello is driving for them now - it would have popular appeal imo.

Alonso all the way this year. He is the best driver out there ...

The first race this weekend in Bahrain.

We've already heard the first (alleged) grumblings out of Mercedes about the car data not being shared evenly between drivers - i.e. same as always, Schumacher gets the benefit of his team-mate's set-up/test data but the same isn't fully shared the other way around. I hope to HELL Nico Rosberg whips Schumy in some tight races.

McLaren's amazing rear wing innovation has been OKed by the scrutineers. Apparently gives them a 6km/h+ advantage on the straights.. It's probably the most awesome design feature since Renault's mass damper device in 2006.

Essentially, McLaren have a tiny slot the width of their rear wing in the lower element (section)... air is fed to it via a small tube from the engine air-intake (above the driver). The air is fed into the airflow on the rear side of the wing which helps hold the air-flow to the wing where it would usually start to separate as it gets near vertical on the wing... This effectively reduced the wing stall and therefore the drag!!!! = more speed (or the same speed for less engine effort)

Note: the left is a conventional F1 rear wing - you can see the split between the upper and lower elements. On the right is the new one. You can still see a split but just above it there is what looks like a thin black line. It's actually a slit through which air can be let out - air which is fed via the engine cover now being joined to the wing.

Major excitement. Will be in front of the TV tonight watching the quals!

If this wing works well how soon will the other teams look at copying it?

Well.. it would entail their first having a shark-fin engine cover which many teams don't. A quick look around car pics shows only McLaren, Renault, Torro Rosso and maybe Force India have them... They'd need to be redesigned so it had the bulk to carry the air-tubes, then also the rear wing from scratch.

I'd say some teams could manage it by Europe in 3 or 4 races time but then they have basically no testing avenues other than on race-weekends. So wind-tunnel of CFD are the testing options - and not very good ones really for this kind of thing. It could make you slower if you didn't get it right. McLaren have probably been working on this for 6 months type thing - going through hundreds of design iterations and wind-tunnel and straight-line tests.

Actually Rebull and BMW Sauber do also. Most shark-fin covers (see pic attached of BMW Sauber's shark fin) are paper thin at the back and this one doesn't even join the rear wing. A redesign would be a major undertaking at this stage in the game.