Aston Martin catch the eye as midfield development race hots up

Matthew Somerfield 26 May 2025 11:28 AM

As expected, a significant portion of the updates that arrived for F1 teams in Monaco revolved around increasing rear downforce and adjusting the front suspension and steering assembly to cope with the narrow, barrier-lined street circuit.

Nine of the ten teams had updates at their disposal for Monaco too, with Mercedes the only team opting against bringing new parts.

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On the weekend Adrian Newey was trackside with his new team for the first time, Aston Martin introduced a new, higher downforce rear wing solution, with elements that take up more of the allowable box region but retain the same DNA as the other designs in their pool.

To balance the car front to rear, they also introduced a new, more loaded front wing, whilst there’s further changes at the rear of the car as a new brake duct has been installed.

The rear brake duct was also redesigned and has an enlarged inlet and outlet to increase cooling capacity but also permitted the team more scope when it comes to the design of the winglets which are mounted around them.Alpine made some adjustments to their front suspension and steering assembly in order to deal with the low-speed requirements of the Monaco circuit.

They also introduced a new rear wing mainplane design, which takes up more space in the allowable box region, in order to increase downforce at a circuit where the drag penalty incurred isn’t factored in so heavily.

Notably the central section of the mainplane’s leading edge has been turned upwards to further increase the wing’s overall yield.

Paired to the new rear wing is a new beam wing solution, which is more loaded than the solution they’ve used so far.

Also note the mini winglet mounted on the back of the rear wing pillar, which albeit not new is an interesting feature.
Racing Bulls’ new high-downforce rear wing solution features the same design choices used by many of their rivals, including a mainplane and top flap that take up much more space within the allowable box region.

However, the tip section differs quite considerably to the other options in their pool as the corners are rounded off, rather than having a square edge.

A high-downforce, double-element beam wing layout was also used in Monaco, which featured additional metal support brackets between the two elements, whilst metal inserts could be found on the end of each element to increase stiffness.

Adjustments were also made to the front brake duct outlet and steering arms on the VCARB02 in order to achieve enough clearance for the low-speed cornering required at the hairpin.

Haas made the same adjustments with a revised front suspension and steering assembly layout and a new high-downforce rear wing and beam wing assembly installed on the VF-25.

Sauber also introduced a new, high-downforce rear wing assembly in Monaco, which featured an upturned leading edge in the central portion of the mainplane, swept tip sections and a minimal V-shaped notch in the centre of the upper flap.

There was also a new front brake duct design on the agenda too, with the team increasing the size of the inlet to help with cooling at lower speeds.