FIA reset F1 aerodynamic handicap allowances to favour Red Bull – Its time to give Ferrari a break from the perpetual questions over their team boss’s job before the the paddock whispers fire up again at the next round of Formula One this Friday in Austria. As the teams approach the end of June, the second period of 2025’s FIA aerodynamic rationing of testing (ATR) will begin anew at the start of next month.
The ATR was first introduced in 2021 and restricts aerodynamic testing using a sliding scale based on constructors’ championship position. This is to act as a gentle form of handicapping, the idea being that the less competitive a team is, the more aerodynamic testing it can do in order to improve.
The pecking order was resetter the first time on January 1st this season, as Red Bull fell from first to third place for the first time since 2022. The Milton Keynes squad are now in fourth place behind McLaren, Mercedes and Ferrari and so will receive an incremental allowance for both wind tunnel runs and CFD design time.
Red Bull now with more aero testing time
Since losing their place at the top of the table, this year Red Bull have had an extra 96 wind tunnel runs and 600 items of CFD. This will increase by another 48 periods in the wind tunnel and another another 300 CFD items as the new 2026 cars are finalised. Of course their rivals all now have less time than Red Bull, with Mercedes losing 10% of their allowance having risen from fourth at the end of last year to second (should they remain there after Austria) and Ferrari will be gaining 5% having dropped from second to third.
Aston Martin are the biggest winner in this reset in that they finished the 2024 season in fifth place, but a disastrous campaign that even Adrian Newt appears unable to save has since the Silverstone team slip to eighth. Just two points ahead of a resurgent Kick Sauber, Aston could find themselves a slot lower in the constructors’ title race come the end of this weekend, and if so will receive a boost of 20% allowance for both CFD and wind tunnel runs.
With the biggest ever F1 car and power unit change of regulations coming in 2026, every resource available to the teams will soon be switched to next seasons programme, although Red Bull maintain they will continue with their pursuit of McLaren in the drivers title race until its highly unlikely Verstappen can claim his recored fifth consecutive championship.
Since the FIA finical restrictions and aero testing handicap system arrived in 2021, teams have stopped throwing everything at their in season car development, which would often see them produce components for just one race of the year. Now the focus is on efficiency, in gaining as much as possible from each wind tunnel run and for each aero concept tested by CFD.
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Brand new aero concepts for 2026
Now is not the time to examine the entire new regulations in detail, but suffice to say the aerodynamics are a radical departure from most anything ever seen in Formula One. Whilst we’ve had the drag reduction system (DRS) since 2011 to allow the cars to drop drag when imposition to overtake, this will be replaced by a driver operated adjustable front wing.
The angle of attack will be lowered (X-mode) and in similar fashion to the DRS will reduce the drag on the car along the straights. For cornering the flaps will raise (Z-mode) to add downforce to the nose of the car thus creating more stability through the corner. Adding downforce to the front of the car along with a number of other technical changes (such as narrower from wings etc) should aid overtaking and hopefully kill the DRS trains we see in today’s racing.
Of course its not just the cars which are drastically changing, but their power units too which makes for an interesting conundrum. Will Mercedes come out on top after they aced the last big engine regulations changes, or will the aerodynamics which Red Bull excel at be the key to the fastest car?
Red Bull of course are building their own power units after years of disappointment with their put-put Renault V6 Turbo. No F1 team without a road car building programme has ever attempted this before, yet in modern F1, the various engineers move frequently between roles for different F1 outfits in England’s motorsports valley. There have been a significant number of Mercedes power unit specialists whom Red Bull mopped up when the cost cap programme was implemented.
Will new F1 power trump aero design?
Whether we will see another period where the best power unit trumps even a far better car aerodynamically is yet to be seen, but Adrian Newey believes the chances of this are high. “There has to be a big chance that it’s an engine formula at the start,” Newey told Auto Motor und Sport following his move to Aston. “I can’t remember another time in Formula 1 when both the chassis regulations and the engine regulations have changed simultaneously, and where in this case the chassis regulations have been very much written to try to compensate, let’s say, for the power unit regulations. So there’s an extra dimension.”
Despite Newey’s finger in the air assessment and with Aston Martin becoming the Honda works outfit, it cold be the car design as in 2009 with Brawn GP simply trumps whatever the PU manufacturers come up with. Of the top four teams now Red Bull are in a far better position to exploit various concepts for the new regulations as the fight for engineering glory hots up over the next six months.
Red Bull now have 15% more aero testing time than McLaren until December, which in turns of wind tunnel runs is a whopping 144 more runs and in terms of CFD the incremental items are 900. With stable regulations its easier for a team with a smaller aero testing allowance to compete, but across whole new set of aero concepts which require testing, this is a big advantage for Red Bull Racing in their chase to return to the top of F1.
Of course as last year proved, anything can happen in Austria but the pecking order with Ferrari 15 points behind Mercedes and Red Bull 21 further back means without a huge surprise like a Ferrari 1-2, the teams will remain in the order they currently are. And it appears there’s one advantage to the problem of the second seat at Red Bull which the team may be in no hurry to solve.
Italian media blame Ferrari directors for Vasseur ‘with hunt’
The average tenure of the modern Ferrari Formula One team boss is just three years. Since the sport’s CEO, Stefano Domenicali, left Maranello in 2014, the team have appointed four new managers, with Fred Vasseur the latest.
The Frenchman replaced the outgoing Mattia Binotto, who having served for 27 years in Maranello was the latest scapegoat for Ferrari F1 failure to win a title. As an engineer, Binotto was they behind many of Ferrari’s power units over the years and in 2019 was responsible for the campaign which the team contested with an engine later deemed illegal by the FIA.
This led to a private settlement between F1’s governing body and the Scuderia, although the details of the settlement remain confidential to this day. Ferrari’s form dipped dramatically over the next two seasons as Binotto struggled o get to grips with vested interests in Maranello although during his final year the team claimed four race victories, sixteen other podiums with Charles Leclerc racking up twelve pole positions for the team…. READ MORE
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