Australian Grand Prix Tech Updates
With only two weeks between pre-season testing and the Australian Grand Prix, the teams had a monumental challenge to not only get their new 2019 machinery to Australia, but turn around any updates from testing. This didn’t stop them though….
Starting at the front, the majority of front wing designs are very similar to what was revealed during pre-season testing. With such a tight turnaround, modifying the front wing can be risky as any change can completely change the behaviour of the airflow, affecting the performance of all the other aerodynamic devices downstream. Despite this, Red Bull have made a very minor alteration to the RB15’s front wing endplates as highlighted in blue below.
Front wing endplate comparison of the Red Bull RB15 at the Australian GP (left) and pre-season testing (right) Another aerodynamic change is the additional winglets added to the Halo of the Mercedes W10 for the Australian GP. Interestingly, last year despite the majority of other teams running with these type of winglets, Mercedes never did. At pre-season testing this remained the case, however for the Australian GP the W10 features a two-tier set of winglets, located on top of the main structure of the Halo, as shown below. 
Halo comparison of the Mercedes W10 at the Australian GP (left) and pre-season testing (right)
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