Brad 98 said:

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I really think that 2 to 3 races should be a reverse order on the last race run. I do enjoy the races when the top teams have to start at the back of the grid due to engine penalties. They will lose a lot of US fans if it is the same finish basically every week

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I know the recent jump in popularity is mostly due to DTS, but F1 just came off 8 years of Merc domination and interest is still sky high. You may lose some very casual fans, yes, but I think most race fans know that almost every race there's only 3-6 drivers that have a prayer of finishing on the podium, much less P1. Maybe I'm wrong.

I'd agree. The best thing that DTS did was explain how every place matters, and that different races between teams occur every race.

Before DTS, knowing nothing about F1, I used to watch a race for a few minutes and think "that car is 27 seconds ahead of everyone else , how is this fun? "

Now I know every point matters . Specific teams are racing against other teams.

It's difficult to truly answer this question because we don't see the most important part of the aerodynamics in this regulation set, which is the undertray/floor. With ground effect cars, most of the downforce is generated from the underside of the car.

That said, Red Bull utilize the area just above the floor to maximize downforce, almost similarly to the 'blown diffuser' concept that they maximized back in the Vettel domination days.

Ferrari's concept seems to maximize lowering the center of weight in the car. There is almost a bathtub-like look when you observe the car from overhead where the side pods push down and theoretically the air, at speed, increases that effect.

Mercedes went with what has been called a zero sidepod design. They claim that they can't run the car low enough to maximize the downforce potential with this design because porpoising takes over. Where Mercedes messed up, was not seeing porpoising in their wind tunnel testing prior to designing the W13 (or last year's car).

Toto's complaining about the ride height issue last year and forcing a new rule to raise the ride height may have actually hurt them even more, ultimately because they need to run the car low to maximize its potential. Because of the rule, I think we are going to see Mercedes abandon the zero sidepod concept pretty shortly.

What's interesting is, the Aston Martin is effectively a Frankenstein of all three concepts. Mercedes engine, gearbox, and suspension, which maximizes the strengths of that car which is traction. (Also this is a characteristic that Fernando really likes in his cars, dating back to the Renault third-spring days). The Aston also has the Ferrari downsloping sidepods from above, and the aggressive downslope on the floor like Red Bull.