As this air travels downstream, it feeds the main turning vanes as well as the leading edge of the underfloor. If this oncoming flow is turbulent the aerodynamic performance of these devices greatly reduces. Therefore, the cleaner the teams can get this airflow, the more performance they can extract from the other aero devices downstream.

‘The airflow under the nose is ‘dirty’ which means it is a slower speed flow that has been worked by the presence of the nose and the front wing,’ explains Arron Melvin, Principal Aerodynamicist at Haas F1 Team. ‘To be legal, it is necessary to have certain nose volumes and inevitably there is a boundary layer growth due to the front wing and nose expansions and you can also get acceleration around the shoulder of the nose which leads to a high curvature flow.’