The Ferrari's sidepods and the front suspension on the Mercedes and Toro Rosso are among the technical details that have caught the eye of Red Bull's chief technical officer Adrian Newey.
Changes to the regulations for 2017 have resulted in a new breed of Formula One cars this year, with the regulations shifting early-season focus back to aerodynamics. The development rate of the cars is expected to be intense over the coming weeks, but after seeing all of the launch packages on his rivals' cars, Newey highlighted a number of details that had piqued his interest.
"Obviously there are a few different interpretations of the regulations which is what one might hope for with a new set of regulations," he said on the first day of testing. "In particular the Mercedes looks like a complicated car, it's got a lot of parts on it which will be about trying to manipulate the vortices to position the flow structures around the car. The Ferrari has a complicated looking sidepod which I have not quite managed to work out yet from the pictures I have seen.
"Mercedes and Toro Rosso have gone for a higher top wishbone which kind of looks like a Lotus 49, with its inboard high king pin, which I would imagine is aimed at trying to get the bottom wishbone higher and trying to get the top wishbone higher and to clean up the brake duct area, those are probably the main areas I have seen that are a little bit different.
"Obviously when you have a new set of regulations like that you do get different solutions and what works on other peoples cars for example wouldn't necessarily work on ours. It's probably fair to say that over the coming weeks we will have a good look at other peoples cars and decide which bits are interesting and which we want to investigate for ourselves. We can't look at everything and some bits we will have to form a judgement on."
Asked if he had seen anything that he wished he had thought of, Newey added: "It's difficult to say because, as I mentioned earlier, there are some different ideas out there. The fundamental architectural difference is the front suspension arrangement that Mercedes and Toro Rosso have adopted.
"Is that a fundamental advantage that the rest of us will end up copying in coming seasons is impossible to say for us because we don't know if it's something that will work on our car or not."