Formula 1’s current ground-effect cars are unlikely to go down as fond favourites for the engineers and designers who have worked with them.
Running ultra low to the ground, with super stiff suspension to keep ride heights at their optimum, they are tricky beasts to keep in the perfect balance window – as many teams have found out to their cost.
But there is another truth that has emerged since the current formula arrived in 2022, and it is that trying to develop and improve them is also not easy.
Time and again, a team will deliver an upgrade that its wind tunnel and CFD simulations suggest will bring a step forward in performance – only for it to fall flat because the data promise is not matched by how things turn out in real life.
Sometimes an improvement can trigger the return of bouncing, or lead to some other balance characteristic change that results in the drivers losing confidence, with a big impact on lap time.
That fact that three of the four top outfits – Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes – all had their issues with upgrades throwing a spanner in the works at various points during the 2024 campaign shows how challenging these cars can be to improve.
Key to charting a route out of such difficulties is accepting that what is needed to improve lap time with these cars is not what it was with previous rule sets.
Gone, in particular, is an almost linear association between adding more downforce to the car and an automatic quicker lap time.
Now, making a car faster requires a different mindset, where it is not so much about chasing peak downforce levels – it is all about making the car platform as useable as possible so drivers can extract everything possible. The interaction between aero and mechanical settings has never been closer.
This new reality is something that Aston Martin has had to come to terms with this season, as the team endured a second consecutive campaign where upgrades did not hit the mark and Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll found themselves slipping down the order.
And, as it dug deep into the reasons why it has hit trouble, the squad has quickly understood that a previous obsession with chasing peak downforce is no longer fit for purpose.
This mindset has especially changed with the arrival of CEO Andy Cowell, who has transitioned into the role that was previously held by Martin Whitmarsh.
While Cowell’s experience was in engines – he even admitted recently that he has had do a crash course in aerodynamics since arriving at Aston Martin – what he well knows from his time at Mercedes is the importance of the 'package'.
Sources suggest that he has helped empower a new sharpness of focus that success comes from having the most useable platform - even if on paper that does not mean unleashing the highest downforce numbers.
This helps explain why the squad did so much evaluation of its Suzuka and Budapest floor concepts at the end of the year after its Austin upgrade flopped.
As team principal Mike Krack reflected on Aston beginning to get a broader focus on what upgrades needed to do, he admitted it was not an easy thing to accept.
"When we are where we are, you have to say go down [in downforce] to make it nicer, that is a tough call isn't it?," he said.
"But that is why we have people in place to make these calls. The decision is certainly a tough call, to define targets based on where we are now, but we are defining them, we have defined them, and now it is about trying to achieve them."
After two seasons where much time was spent getting to the bottom of why the upgrade paths Aston had taken had not delivered everything hoped for, Krack feels that the team understands much better what it needs to get things right going forward.
“Sometimes you have to take a step back to move forward,” he said. “The whole thing is about understanding this car.
“We know what happens when you go too close to the limit, so it is about how close can you go, and what is your balance when getting closer, closer, closer to the limit.
“We have not found the sweet spot. In qualifying with new tyres, I think often we hide a bit the weaknesses, which I think is why the cars are so close together in qualifying.
“But in the race, the weakness of the car comes out, as there is no hiding in the race. There you see where you need to work."
While the understanding from within Aston Martin has moved on greatly, it is obvious that the outfit will be boosted immensely by the knowledge brought from outside when some big name hires arrive next year.
Star designer Adrian Newey will not begin work until March, but there remains a chance that the outfit could get hold of former Ferrari chief designer Enrico Cardile before then.
And these two individuals, who come with race-winning knowledge from Red Bull and Ferrari, are well versed in the key concept understandings that are required to make the current cars a success.
Krack admits that the quicker it can get its information download from Cardile, the better.
“I think it is a combination of the new people and the people we have,” he explained. “It is really good if you have people with experience of these kinds of cars.
“So certainly, the day he starts, we will be all day with our questions and maybe adjust some targets."
What is clear though is that Aston Martin needs to put its theories into practice as the team cannot just sit back and wait for a better long-term future under Cardile and Newey.
There were times when the AMR24 was only the eighth or ninth fastest in races towards the end of last season – and a continued run like that would risk stalling momentum ahead of a 2026 campaign where its target is to be at the front.
For Krack, moving forward now is accepting what the team got wrong and making sure it responds in the best way possible.
"We cannot afford to let '25 slip,” he said. “We have delivered two years in a row not really the performance we wanted. So I think we need to be humble, take a humble approach and try to solve one step after the next issues we were having this year.
“The cars are quite mature now – but there are still quite big differences between them. Everybody has reached a level of maturity that we don't have, so this is something we have to catch up on."
