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McLaren tested a new floor specification on Friday in first practice for Formula 1's British Grand Prix, running it on both cars before removing it for the rest of the weekend.
Does that show McLaren has petered out in terms of its upgrades, or perhaps that now it has a firm hold on both championships that caution comes into play?
"The plan was always going to be that the floor was a test floor to have an early read as to this new specification because the next race is a sprint event in which is more difficult to introduce a new specification and make the proper comparisons," said McLaren F1 team principal Andrea Stella.
"We are actually pretty pleased with what we have seen yesterday in free practice one and all the indications seem to lead us to introduce this new floor for the coming events."
The last thing McLaren needs now is to get lost by running something new before having a full understanding of how it affects the overall car performance.
The new floor specification has a more aggressive flow-scavenging mechanism, highlighted with the red ellipse on the outer edge of the front corner of the floor.
I always say this area is critical in getting the best performance out of the diffuser and, in turn, the underfloor. By scavenging some of the airflow that is presented to the leading edge of the underfloor from this area and using it to help seal the floor edge further rearward, you allow the diffuser to have more consistent airflow from further inboard.
However, at some point it would be possible to overdo it and end up generating some instability in the airflow passing under the car to the diffuser.
The new package is not unlike this comparison to the Red Bull floor edge below.
But again, the devil is in the detail. Small changes can influence the overall performance dramatically. It’s all about the sum of all the parts working together consistently and not simply focusing on any one part doing everything.
Red Bull also introduced a small detail change to the floor’s upper surface of the sidepod undercut, one that Max Verstappen carried into qualifying - saying that “it brought something”.
This small bulge inside the blue ellipse is there to allow Red Bull to achieve some profile detail in the underfloor surface. However, Red Bull has altered the leading edge of it and removed the fin it had on the older version, which is highlighted in yellow.
A fin like this is fine, but it does mean that it attempts to define the flow direction. It can very easily generate some separation problems if that flow direction is not consistent.
Four years into these ground effect regulations, and with a major regulation change being introduced next year, I’m not surprised to see subtle changes being the order of the day. However, you still need to be careful that you don’t end up going down the wrong path and getting lost for two or three races.
