With focus primarily shifting towards the 2026 Formula 1 season, upgrades this year have begun to dry up, but Mercedes and Red Bull have managed to keep going.
With McLaren sealing the Constructors’ Championship, the Woking-based squad’s dominance rendered any additional upgrades unnecessary.
Ferrari had, of course, needed a plethora of upgrades throughout the season to try and eradicate the early-season issues of its floor and rear suspension.
These, to some extent, have been solved, but the SF-25 is still often required to be lifted and coasted home by both Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc.
This, then, has left Red Bull and Mercedes as the apparent strongest challengers for second place in the table, and both are coping admirably.
The RB21 has had a change in its front flap on the front wing, and has been specifically added to cope with its insistent performances on high-downforce circuits.
At Spa and Monza, it was used with a skinnier rear wing, which, in the latter, along with a changed floor, propelled Max Verstappen to a dominant win.
Singapore was always going to be the acid test for Red Bull, as a supremely high-downforce circuit, and it combated this by placing its adjuster hooks 2cm inboard.
This gives the wing more flexibility, reduces drag and promotes increased airflow through the front of the car, and Verstappen’s second place vindicated the change.
Mercedes provided its own solution and interpretation of this problem by upgrading its own front flaps on the front wing, but by instead increasing the surface area.
And again, it proved successful, with George Russell securing a dominant victory at Marina Bay, and with Andrea Kimi Antonelli taking fifth place.
These developments and both teams’ evident willingness to do so have proved that they have been able to add these changes whilst continuing to look at their 2026 progress.
It will give Ferrari a wake-up call to pull out all the stops if it is to match its 2024 Constructors’ Championship position, but with Red Bull and Mercedes improving, it may be a demoralising development with just a handful of Grands Prix left.
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