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How wind-tunnel testing can make or break an F1 season

Gregory Leporati   

How wind-tunnel testing can make or break an F1 season
  • Wind-tunnel testing is crucial for Formula 1 teams to study and optimize a car's aerodynamics.
  • Aerodynamics have become vital as regulations have emphasized downforce and airflow.

Formula 1 is a fast sport, with cars reaching speeds of well over 200 mph. But off the track, things are a bit slower and more methodical. Months of testing go into the development of each race car — and wind-tunnel testing is critical in this process.

"Wind-tunnel testing is simply the most important development tool you have," said Guenther Steiner, a former team principal of the Haas F1 team who's now an ambassador for the Miami Grand Prix. "You come up with ideas and test them through computer simulations, but then you must verify they actually work. That's where the wind tunnel comes in."

Essentially, the wind tunnel is a large tubelike room with a massive fan at one end and a 60% scale model of a Formula 1 car suspended from the ceiling. A rolling track underneath the scale model simulates the road of a Formula 1 circuit, allowing engineers to study the car's aerodynamics without having to go to an actual track.

"It's really just a big — well, very big — metal tube with a fan in it," said Dan Fallows, the technical director of the Aston Martin Aramco F1 team, which this month is opening a technology center with a new wind tunnel.

"Instead of the car moving around the circuit, the car stays in one place, but the road moves and air flows around it," Fallows continued. "We simulate all of the conditions the car would see as it goes around the circuit, and, more importantly, we can directly measure the loads that would play on the car as it goes around the track in those conditions."

Throughout the year, teams develop new parts that affect the car's aerodynamics, such as variations on the front and rear wings, the side pods, and the car's floor. The teams run these parts through a simulated computer model known as CFD, or computational fluid dynamics, and then place scale models on the car in the wind tunnel.

"It gives us a very accurate understanding on the forces around the car and, if we do an update, what it would do for us," Fallows said. "It shows us what lap time or performance gain we could get."

Engineers also communicate with the team's drivers and principal to develop the car to their liking and identify problems on a track-by-track basis.

"Some of the research is just stabilizing the car to make it easier to drive," Fallows said. "We split it between testing for outright performance and also track-dependent issues."

Aerodynamics era

In recent years, the wind tunnel has become more essential to the development of a Formula 1 car. Since 2022, car regulations have emphasized downforce and airflow, making aerodynamics vital.

"Our race cars are currently in an aerodynamics era," said Zak Brown, the CEO of McLaren. "Sometimes, in the past, we've been in a power-unit era, for example — but the emphasis on aerodynamics right now makes the wind tunnel critically important."

The wind tunnel is so crucial that Formula 1 has restricted the time that teams can spend using their wind tunnels in a week. Time allotment works on a sliding scale: The constructor in last place gets the most time, while the first-place team gets the least.

"It's sort of like how in the NFL the worst team gets the best draft pick," Brown said. "The wind tunnel is used as a bit of a balancing act for team performance because it is just that critical."

The present and the future

Each team walks a fine line between using the wind tunnel to further develop its current car and using it to develop the next season's car. Fallows said this would be particularly important for the 2026 season, when new rules and regulations will require substantial changes to car design.

"It's very tricky to allocate the time because we have a finite amount of resources," Fallows said. "But no doubt, for 2026, people will be starting their development an awful lot earlier. We're actually not allowed to start research on that until January 1, 2025 — but I guarantee every team will be doing that on the first day of the new year."

Though wind-tunnel testing is largely a long-term development tool, Fallows said it could have short-term effects. He and his engineers at the technology center in England talk with the team at the track each Grand Prix weekend and often make adjustments in real time.

"When it gets really exciting is when you have something that happens on a race weekend, maybe during a Friday practice, and you get feedback from the drivers or engineers," he said. "You go into the wind tunnel, identify the problem, fix it, and get the solution on the car before it even goes to qualifying. That happens more often than you think."

As with most things in Formula 1, teams are secretive about the specifics of their wind tunnels. For example, Fallows confidently says the wind tunnel in the new Aston Martin technology center will be the most advanced in Formula 1 — but can he divulge why?

"Um, not really!" he said with a laugh. "Unfortunately, it's a bit of a closely guarded secret, but we've upgraded some of the things that other teams have. By the time it comes online, it'll be the best wind tunnel in a number of areas — and that should give us an edge."



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