ryaan2904 wrote: ↑25 Feb 2023, 14:17
Is the sf23 inherently understeery? Also today press conference charles said the car characteristics have changed this year. They've gained top speed but lost downforce, atleast compared to redbull.
Doesnt look good.
As some have already mentioned, Ferrari drives with a rear wing with much less downforce than would be appropriate for Bahrain. Of course, this has corresponding consequences. Therefore, of course, any comparison is difficult as far as that is concerned. However, it's certainly not negative that Ferrari still sets acceptable times and is probably the second fastest car in these tests, because the lack of downforce means you lose lap time in any case. You also have to consider that Ferrari has made massive changes to both suspensions in terms of suspension geometry, so you're almost starting from scratch in terms of set-up. And it is a very complex and tedious matter to find a good or basic set-up, especially as far as the dampers are concerned. So there's practically twice the performance hidden here that you can't see yet. What is rather worrying are Leclerc's comments that he has experimented with different driving styles, which makes it clear that the car has changed significantly in terms of balance and is probably not optimal. Of course, this also has a lot to do with the set-up. It does seem that the SF-23 has a tendency to understeer, as Sainz seems to cope better with it. In a way, this would be logical, since Ferrari realized many years ago that cars with a slight tendency to understeer are gentler on the tires. Therefore, it might actually be a development goal for the SF-23 to achieve exactly this tendency. But all in all, there is certainly still a lot of power in the SF-23, which is contesting the tests with a rear wing with too little downforce and completely new suspensions, as well as a completely changed thermalem management as far as the tires are concerned.