Ferrari was the one staff apart from Purple Bull to win a race final 12 months and took 5 pole positions over the ultimate 9 races of the season.
So whereas different front-running groups like Mercedes determined early on they wanted to completely overhaul their automotive design to get on phrases with Purple Bull, Ferrari needed to retain their SF-23’s strengths whereas addressing its weaknesses.
The SF-24, introduced on Tuesday, goals to do precisely that. It’s not an enormous departure from final 12 months’s automotive however Ferrari imagine they’ve labored out how they will extract extra potential from it and handle its excessive sensitivity to modifications in situations, one thing they made progress with over the ultimate races of 2023, which allowed its qualities to shine.
The staff made a powerful begin to the present F1 guidelines period at first of 2022. Its F1-75 received the primary two races of that season and propelled Charles Leclerc into championship competition.
Chassis technical director Enrico Cardile doesn’t imagine the staff’s subsequent lapse in kind at first of final season was because of low season modifications to the technical laws which led them to make modifications to its flooring. He says they merely exhausted the event choices with their authentic philosophy and wanted a change of path.
“I don’t assume that the regulation modifications affected what we did,” he instructed media together with RaceFans. “To start out with the 2022 automotive idea was one however on the finish of the day, when it comes to how far we might have gone with this idea was lower than with the brand new idea.
“It was only a matter of how excessive is the height of efficiency you’ll be able to attain with that idea or with the opposite idea. So the 2022 automotive was automotive offering good efficiency, very secure, however once we began so as to add downforce to the automotive we strongly believed that the brand new idea will enable us to go extra far than the earlier one.”
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The staff “reached a form of asymptote on what we might do with the automotive” beneath the earlier design, stated Cardile, and it “was essential to revamp the fully the structure of the automotive” in an effort to enhance the efficiency of its flooring. Considerably, he additionally claimed the path Ferrari has gone in “will likely be fairly widespread throughout the grid” this 12 months.
Groups’ selections of suspension configuration have been a specific focal point this 12 months, as Purple Bull and McLaren loved success with their entrance pull-rod configurations final 12 months. Ferrari has not embraced the identical resolution, however Cardile believes they received’t be held again by their choice for a push-rod, which Mercedes, Aston Martin and others additionally proceed to make use of.
“We examined, for a few years, a push-rod suspension,” Cardile defined. “In actuality, our rear suspension is a bit completely different when it comes to wishbone set-up and decrease wishbone distribution in comparison with a Purple Bull one, to say one staff. And we recorded good aero outcomes shifting in the direction of this path, whereas shifting from push-rod to pull-rod we didn’t measure a giant benefit as such to justify some compromise when it comes to weight or compliance. So from there we developed our suspension, protecting the identical structure.”
Nonetheless whereas “the entrance is just about a carry-over of final 12 months when it comes to idea,” Cardile says some revisions have been made to the suspension geometry on the rear of the automotive. “The primary variations in comparison with final 12 months’s automotive are on the rear the place the suspension is in another way positioned,” he stated.
“Contained in the gearbox can also be a special idea which for us has been an innovation as a result of there’s a special approach to handle the inboard suspension in comparison with what we did up to now.”
Ferrari has additionally centered on bettering its straight-line pace. This has meant altering most of the completely different rear wing trim ranges it chooses from throughout a 12 months primarily based on how a lot downforce it requires at every monitor.
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“A part of the event of this 12 months’s automotive has been additionally to revamp fully the rear wing,” stated Cardile. “The automotive has been already introduced with a brand new mid-downforce rear wing. We’re revamping accordingly just about all of the vary we now have. So we focus our consideration additionally on the rear wings.”
A key measure of the success of Ferrari’s newest design will likely be whether or not they can enhance their automotive’s efficiency over a stint with out sacrificing the single-lap efficiency which yielded a complete of seven pole positions final 12 months.
“After we discuss driveability, a part of the driveability is how straightforward it’s to extract the efficiency, which might be achieved with a lightweight automotive, new tyres on one single lap then turning into trickier and trickier through the race whereas the tyres put on, the wind modifications and so forth,” Cardile defined.
“So the main focus of accelerating the sturdiness of the automotive is to have a greater efficiency additionally in a race. The intention could be to place collectively the 2 worlds: Maintaining being a aggressive automotive in quali however with a platform extra pleasant, extra exploitable additionally through the race, with a greater efficiency in race.”
This has been tackled via aerodynamic modifications. “The driveability content material has been achieved with the aerodynamics of the automotive by shaping the map and giving precedence to some points of the aerodynamics as an alternative of others.”
Nonetheless the staff received’t have the ability to decide whether or not that drawback has been solved with out compromising the automotive’s single-lap efficiency till they’ve run extra extensively. “What’s going to occur with this new platform through the season when it comes to compromising the quali session for the race session is one thing we’ll see once we will likely be on monitor,” Cardile concluded. “Now could be too early to say if this automotive will likely be extra aggressive in race at than in quali like has been the previous vehicles.”
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