General
Hughes: 'Good chance of high development speed late in the season'
- GPblog.com
In a normal season, each team brings upgrades to the first race of the season. These are relatively small improvements here and there that have been developed over time. Relatively soon after the start of the season, the updates to the cars will follow each other relatively quickly after which it will decrease towards the end of the season, as the focus will then be on the new car. This year will probably be completely different.
Intense development speed
In a technical analysis from a hypothetical perspective Mark Hughes writes on the Formula 1 website: "We may also be about to see an atypically intense late-season development pace." One of the reasons for this is that many factories have only been open for a short period of time, because they all closed down for quite some time due to the pandemic. As a result, little development has been able to take place, but this speed will increase more and more.
"Every team will have taken upgrades of their Barcelona testing cars to Melbourne. The size and scope of such upgrades would have varied between the teams, but those Melbourne-spec cars will now never be seen", because the development is already one step further. The factories have been able to work on the car for about thirty days since the cancellation of the race in Australia. Although this is a short period of time, that time is very valuable.
Various improvements
Now that the season is shorter and the factories are up and running again, the development will be different as the time span is shorter. In addition, the various improvements since the winter test and Melbourne have not yet been effectively tested on the track. Only then will those specific improvements be able to be further optimised and that takes time.
However, Hughes does expect a wide range of improvements. These will mainly be seen in the wings, bargeboards, diffuser combinations and a few updates from the winter tests. All this together with what was brought to Melbourne and what came out of the simulations. With the start of the season everything will slowly but surely gain momentum and the development will be useful with a view to 2021.
After all, the introduction of new cars has been postponed to 2022, which means that current cars will remain relevant for one year longer. That's worthwhile for teams to see where there are further development opportunities. Given the chance that the season will also last a bit longer, it is likely that by the last part of the season we will see a "more intense" development speed in Formula 1 than usual.