They say nature has all the best designs and certainly the shoulder louvres of an F1 car carry more than a passing resemblance to the gills of a fish. Mounted atop the sidepods (the ‘shoulders’), they’re used to provide extra cooling for components tucked away under the skin. They come with a drag penalty, so the arrangement is different from race to race, dependent upon ambient conditions and duty cycle. We fit long louvres, short louvres, sometimes no louvres. They’re occasionally asymmetrical – because sometimes the components installed in one sidepod run a little hotter than those in the other.