(Motorsports news) However, some of AlphaTauri’s opponents supported it because of how far it had come, raising doubts about whether its closer ties to sister club Red Bull were giving either team an unfair advantage. Although there are no indications that the Red Bull squads are breaking any laws, it is obvious that teams can work together more closely to optimize development routes.

Because of this, competitors took notice of the new AlphaTauri floor that was brought to Abu Dhabi. Some even suggested that it would provide insight into Red Bull’s future as well as the development path of AlphaTauri the team based in Faenza in 2024. Although AlphaTauri adopted some of the lessons learned from the outgoing design, the floor modifications were, in some respects a reversion to a previous standard employed during the season.

We are unable to fully appreciate the magnitude of the alterations because the underneath of the car reaps the greatest benefits, as is typically the case with floor developments. We therefore don’t get to see what’s below the car unless there’s an incident where the car needs to be recovered or there’s a mistake made by the mechanics that makes it clear.

The team said in the documentation for the car presentation that “the mid floor and ‘canoe’ surfaces local to the plank have also been extensively modified to enable greater local load generation from that part of the floor,” so even with these modifications, we are aware that they will have an effect. Despite not having direct access to the underfloor, we can still learn a little bit about those modifications by seeing the new topside design.

For instance, there is now a softer blister on the floor’s surface that no longer connects to the ramped sidewall of the outer floor fence due to changes made to the way the lower SIPS are encased within the floor. As a result, just outside the outer floor gate, the ramped portion of the floor and the main body of the floor are disconnected once more. This structure, along with the downstream edge wing, has also undergone reprofileing.

Instead of a more pronounced and squared-off profile like the one adopted at the US Grand Prix, the forward, more upwardly scrolling section of the edge wing was returned to the overlapping tongue-style configuration last used in Qatar. The strakes have also been altered as a result of these modifications and the element’s decreased camber.

When compared to the Qatar spec item, the part aft of the strakes has been lengthened; instead, it has taken inspiration from the COTA spec design (lower inset), before the surface turns back inwards to form the tail section. In order to achieve this goal and enable one of the fences to be shifted from a more inboard location to one that is much closer to the outer fences, the team also rearranged the floor fences at the leading edge of the floor. They did this by adding a splitter winglet, indicated by the red arrow.

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