Valtteri Bottas believes the race leader can still “control” the pace despite small improvements thanks to the 2019 aero changes.
New front and rear wings plus other tweaks to key parts were meant to allow drivers to follow closer this season and hopefully generate more overtaking.
Certainly, a byproduct of the changes, a more powerful DRS, has led to better action in the opening three races but Bottas has sent a warning with some trickier circuits coming up.
“Even being three or four seconds behind you’re sliding more, which overheats the tyres more, and then it’s more difficult,” he explained in quotes on PlanetF1.
“But that’s how F1 has been for a long time, whoever is in the lead can control it a little bit and always has it easier in a way.”
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Efforts are continuing to design cars which are much less sensitive to dirty or turbulent air from 2021, with Formula 1 motorsport director Ross Brawn suggesting only five percent of downforce will be lost according to latest estimates.
For now though…
“It’s a little bit better,” the Mercedes driver said about this year’s machines.
“Last year you could feel a bit more turbulence, a bit more movement in the car. It is a bit more stable, but you lose a bit of grip and downforce.
“Now the cars have more downforce than they did last year. Obviously, there’s no air to make the wings work, you lose grip, that’s how it goes.
“It’s a good thing that the car’s not doing anything funny when you’re following. It’s just a general loss of downforce.
“The more downforce you have, the more percentage of downforce you lose when you’re behind another car.
“I haven’t been in the other cars so I don’t know how it feels, but for sure it feels like we have a good level of downforce because we’ve been really strong in the corners.”