Spot the difference: All 10 sidepod designs under the microscope

Matthew Somerfield 05 Mar 2025 9:00 AM

Formula One’s last cars of this generation have mainly converged on one solution which had a wide variety of design options on show at the beginning of this regulatory era.

The sidepods on all ten cars now have downsloping bodywork, albeit they carry their own, unique, design DNA to work in conjunction with their surroundings.

However, whilst there’s a general consensus on the overall shape of the main bodywork, there’s still indecision amongst the designer’s on which inlet scheme works best for cooling and the wider aerodynamic implications that might have.

Three inlets and an outlier

Let’s kick things off with the elephant in the room, Alpine, who’ve not yet followed in the footsteps of their rivals and adopted the overbite layout, instead retaining the underbite that everyone else has now moved on from.

But, given the team are running the same chassis as they did in 2024, it’s unsurprising that they’ve retained a similar layout, given that they’ll have been unable to make the same level of changes beneath the bodywork that their counterparts have.

Nonetheless, they do share some commonality with two of the other teams on the grid, as they have also retained the P-shaped inlet arrangement, which can also be found on this year’s McLaren and Ferrari.

McLaren had a more traditional, if we can call it that, inlet in 2024, with a hooped-style arrangement mounted beneath the overbite mid-wing.

However, to leverage this further, they have made the switch to the P-shaped inlet for 2025, which has resulted in them being able to optimise the shape of the undercut and give the mid-wing a more prominent role.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the McLaren redesign is not the inlet though, rather it has to do with how they’ve created a depression in the chassis around the inlet, stealing some real estate in order that the inlet can be a little smaller than would otherwise be possible.

Meanwhile, Ferrari, who switched to an overbite-style solution at Imola last season, have retained the P-shaped inlet that came with it. However, they’ve gone a step further, pushing the inlet back underneath the overbite, which is now formed by a mid-wing, similar to the one seen on the McLaren.

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Two’s company

Red Bull made the switch to a two inlet arrangement at the beginning of last season, with two letterbox-style intakes pressed into the face of the sidepods bodywork, one horizontal, mounted up underneath the overbite, some might say mimicking a shark mouth. The other, vertical intake spread up the side of the chassis, in a similar fashion to the bypass intake that Ferrari introduced in 2023. They further supplemented this with the smaller intakes beside the halo, which have been retained this season but the ones around the airbox have been removed.

Mercedes have been on somewhat of a journey throughout this regulation set when it comes to the shape of their sidepods but have now largely converged on the solutions seen elsewhere, including taking a similar approach to Red Bull with their inlet arrangement this season.

The W16 features a two inlet solution, albeit the vertical inlet beside the chassis is much wider on the Mercedes than the one found on the Red Bull, which could be down to a number of factors.

This could include but is not limited to, wanting to have a different aerodynamic effect for the undercut and ongoing bodywork, needing more cooling for their powerunit and ancillaries and, of course, they don’t have the supplementary intakes beside the halo that Red Bull do.

Racing Bulls have made quite a significant switch for 2025, as whilst many of their rivals adopted the overbite solution as part of an in-season design overhaul, they didn’t, meaning they’ve changed the design of the entire front end of the sidepod for 2024.

The new design is, as you’d probably expect, very similar to Red Bull’s, albeit the upper horizontal inlet is larger, probably to account for the fact they don’t have the ancillary intakes beside the halo. The vertical inlet beside the chassis is also very slender when compared with the Mercedes and flares out slightly at the top and bottom of the opening.

The traditionalists

The remaining four teams have what I’m going to determine to be more of classic or traditional inlet, given the shape, albeit one of them is more of a crossover with the P-shaped solution than the others.

Williams, Haas and Sauber all have this more hooped configuration, which is mounted high and beneath the overbite section of the sidepod’s upper surface.

The Sauber C45 has a mid-wing arrangement, resulting in their intake being sat further back, whilst Williams have a merged overbite and an overall layout similar to last year’s Ferrari, whereas Haas are almost on their own Island, as the VF-25 sits somewhere in the middle of these.

Then we move onto Aston Martin, who have the mid-wing arrangement similar to McLaren and Ferrari, that’s resulted in them pushing back the inlet but, rather than have a full P-shaped inlet, theirs only curves down the chassis about halfway, allowing them to really push the design of the undercut and height of the rest of the bodywork thereafter.

Oh, and not to forget, Aston Martin also has the inlets beside the halo, a small but supplementary cooling feature that likely has more value in terms of cleaning up the losses associated with the cockpit and safety structure.