Alpine and Haas have both introduced upgrade packages earlier than initially planned at this weekend’s Chinese Grand Prix.
Alpine is currently last in the constructors’ championship and had targeted Miami for a major upgrade but has managed to bring a new floor to China to try and accelerate its recovery from a poor start to the season. The floor changes are substantial, with heavily revised front floor fences described as providing a “significant change from flow to front of the floor gives an increase in overall downforce.”
As part of its floor, Alpine has also made revisions to the floor edge and the diffuser to improve flow conditioning further down the car and around the rear tires.
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Haas has even more areas that it has targeted with its developments, with new floor fences paired with a revised floor edge providing more downforce and aimed to improve drivability. On top of that, a change to the engine cover sees a slimmer central exit and larger cooling louvers for better airflow, while there are smaller changes to the mirror housing and rear corner to improve efficiency and downforce.
There are very few updates elsewhere on the grid, with Mercedes and Williams both bringing small additions to the Halo fairing — in the form of additional flicks for Mercedes and revised geometry for Williams — that improve flow to the rear wing. While at RB the area of the headrest behind the driver’s helmet has been reshaped to improve airflow downstream.
The remaining five teams have not submitted any new parts for this weekend’s race in Shanghai, with the Sprint format meaning there is just one practice session on a circuit that Formula 1 hasn’t visited since 2019.