ღF1 cars feature a strange-looking “scaffolding” at preseason testing in Bahrain.

Lewis Hamilton's Ferrar♛i and Andrea Kimi Antonelli's Mercedes were among🌳 the 2025 cars fitted with the odd-looking component on Day 1 of testing.

They ar𝕴e known as “aero rakes” and are covered in sensors to measure the air flow off a car꧂’s body.

Teams then compa♐re this data from the trꦑack to data from the simulator or wind tunnel - from there, they can estimate if the rest of their simulator data is reliable.

Rob Smedley, ex-Ferrari and Williams engineer, explained last year: “When we then analyse that, we’re usually looking for things like separation, as in where the flow's separating and we’re not getting decent flow structures across the surfaces of the ca🤪r.

“We can see if there’s a point꧅ where the front wing ‘falls over’, as we🌄 term it, where we’re not generating the downforce on the front anymore.

“Equally, there are sometimes mꦇore fundamental things that we pick up from the aero rakes that we can’t solve at the track, and that then goes back to the aerodynamics team and they can deliberate on how to solve these fundamental problems and to put these flow structures in a more optimised position.”

Drivers m📖ust not hit full speed with aero rakes fitted because they could fall off.

Eve🍬ry F1 team will run a variation of the aero rakes in Bahrain preseason testing which runs for three d൲ays from February 26-28.