Formula 1 Total Black: teams use old standby to be fastest in 2023

When the Formula 1 placed first in Bahrain on March 5, it will be 105 days since Max Verstappen took his 15th win and reasserted his dominance in the year of his two-time championship. The challenge of dethroning Red Bull has forced the teams to think of various strategies that do not only concern the technical aspect of their cars. The presentations of the new single-seaters had one thing in common bodies with less paint and more exposed carbon fiberan old stand-by to lose weight and, consequently, have faster cars on the track.

The idea is not new. In 1934, the Austrian Alfred Neubauer converted white german cars Mercedesbenz in the S silver arrows. It wasn’t for an aesthetic question but a sporting one: on the advice of his driver Manfred von Brauchitsch, he ordered the paint stripping of the W25 to reach the weight limit of 750 kilos which required the legendary Eifelrennen run. At the moment, exposed the aluminum of the frame and the result was victory.

“When you look at where the history of the Silver Arrows comes from,” recalled Toto Wolff, the boss of Mercedes, at the presentation of the W14, “that time the car was white and overweight, like us last year, and they scratched the paint and aluminum was bare, and the car made weight. So we’re back to that. Really we try to lighten the car in every part and then on the paint side, leaving the car in matt carbon, so history repeats itself. Only in this case it’s a modern material, carbon and not aluminum, and it’s black.”

Ninety years after Neubauer’s revolutionary decision, black is gaining ground in the safer but also bulkier F1 bodies. Not because there’s a weight limit like back then, but because a lighter car is faster.

AS, Mercedes He left silver behind to return to the color he used in 2020 and 2021; the orange of McLaren, year after year, it yields more and more ground; and it’s been a while since then Ferrari They are not one hundred percent red. The phenomenon does not escape smaller teams, such as Haas AND Alfa RomeoThat they got rid of last season’s white and now have black as the predominant color.

Williams, for example, went with another option: changed the shiny blue to a dull one because the shine requires metallic compounds which, of course, give more weight. And, even if it goes without saying that the important thing is not the aesthetics, in F1 every gram counts.

It’s no secret that weight in Formula 1 is the key to fighting for points. In 2023 cars will be the heaviest in history for the 798 kilos that the FIA ​​has requested since March of last year, when it went from the 795 kilos initially foreseen to the current figure. The historic increase is mainly due to security measures; the halo alone weighs 7 kilos.

While there is no maximum weight, it is not recommended to have cars with “overweight” because that would only make them slower, while not reaching the minimum limit ballast can be added in the single-seater sector that each team prefers and is more convenient for their performance.

Last year only Alfa Romeo did not have a noticeable excess weight. “Our rivals use this paint removal technique because the effect is immediate.. In general, a car needs six kilograms of paint,” the team associated with Sauber until the end of 2023 exhibited last year.

It must be taken into account that, in the race, to those 798 kilos you have to add fuel. A full tank is equivalent to 110 kilos, which means that at the start of a Grand Prix the car should weigh at least 908 kilos. Even if there are strategies to load less fuel according to the characteristics of the circuit and therefore put a lighter car on the track.

Outside of those 798 kilos there is also the weight of the rider, which from 2019 must be at least 80. The FIA ​​rule sought to reduce the advantage teams had by hiring not-so-tall drivers to make their cars less heavy.

With so much money at stake, the story says that on March 3, when practice for the first Grand Prix of the year begins, the cars could be different from those presented in February.

In 2022, for example, the McLaren’s air intake was painted orange but arrived in Bahrain black and the Aston Martin was no longer green in some areas of its side pontoon.. Indeed, it is not excluded that these decisions are taken as the races unfold, as when Williams brought a car with large parts of unpainted carbon fiber to Australia.

The changes could come even earlier: during preseason testing February 23-25. “What comes out on the track won’t be a complete reflection of what we showed in New York”anticipated Christian Horner, the head of the champion team, who in the United States presented a Red Bull very similar to the previous one, something similar to what happened with Alpine, the last one to show the two versions of its new car: a pink one – for the first three races – and another blue.