F1 cars feature a strange-looking “scaffolding” at preseason tꦯesting in Bahrain.

Lewis Hamilton's Ferrari and Andrea Kimi Antonelli's Mercedes were among the 2025 cars fitted with the odd-looking component on ✱Day 1🐼 of testing.

They are known as “aero rakes” and are co💧vered in sensors to measure the air flow off a car’s bodyꦰ.

Teams then compare this data from the track 🌃to ಌdata 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, explainedꦡ 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 car.

“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 more 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 struct𒊎ures in a more optimised position.”

Driver🎃s must not hit full speed with aero rakes fitted because they c🍎ould fall off.

Every F1 team will run a variation of the aero rakesౠ in Bahrain preseason testing which runs for three days from February 26-28▨.