After Mercedes introduced a thorough upgrade package in Monaco, Ferrari seem to follow suit by debuting a raft of new part at this weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix. F1Technical's Balázs Szabó reports on Ferrari's latest development push.
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This is quite telling; A lot of people seem to think that Ferrari is just running a low downforce spec car, when in reality this is most likely the configuration they’ll use for a lot of races this season… they might very well change the beam wings and will mend the issues with the high downforce rear wing, but if that’s the case, why not run steeper beam wings at Bahrain?
Seems more like that’s the philosophy they’ve adopted for the rear of the car, regardless of the wing on the back.
've the feeling they've overreacted to last year red bull straight speed advantage and they have moved to a low down for e philosophy in a similar way as they did with the sf90 (which was a big performance regration compared to sf71)
've the feeling they've overreacted to last year red bull straight speed advantage and they have moved to a low down for e philosophy in a similar way as they did with the sf90 (which was a big performance regration compared to sf71)
I don’t think so. Lack of power of last year was a Ferrari choice to save the engines. Redbull took an advantage when Ferrari had to stiffen the suspension in order to fix the porpoising effect.
Last edited by Fede90 on 26 Feb 2023, 12:16, edited 1 time in total.
've the feeling they've overreacted to last year red bull straight speed advantage and they have moved to a low down for e philosophy in a similar way as they did with the sf90 (which was a big performance regration compared to sf71)
SF90 lacked downforce even with the biggest rear wing possible. SF-23 lacks downforce with second-smallest rear wing in 2022 (special Monza spec not counted) and an appropriate-sized front wing that's also far from the biggest possible. It's not the same.
The question is, why they not used it? Do they really weren’t able to fix it and using in the afternoon? And the “new” floor, why they used it just in the last hour of testing?
1) they are confident that the car will be better with new RW and new floor and don’t need to test those.
2) they discovered something on the car that they need to fix before testing other parts otherwise they could lost the direction of development.
3) the base car is this and the other parts are test for next races and not for Bahrain.
Don't know if anyone has posted it yet - but this was the higher loaded rear wing the just painted with flow-vis, drove out and almost directly back in.
It seems the aim has been trying to find same or more downforce as F1-75 with less drag(rear wing). The problem seems to be Bahrain is a bad circuit to actually baseline with this philosophy since it’s too harsh on the rears. I hope with all the data gathering and the correlation being good, they can work over the week and generate simulations back at the factory to actually find a sweet baseline.
It seems the aim has been trying to find same or more downforce as F1-75 with less drag(rear wing).
The challenging part is that drag can come from many areas. Trying to reduce it by targeting the rear wing and just chopping it up, while a rival can run a larger rear wing for the same total car drag, is always going to be a negative compromise imo. You're asking the driver to do more, with less load in the corners.
To me, the launch spec F1-75 wasn't that bad of a trade off of performance versus drag. It was making a lot of laptime in the corners, to compensate and there were several tracks where it could capitalize. The Sf-23 seems to have gone a different direction in that regard.
It seems the aim has been trying to find same or more downforce as F1-75 with less drag(rear wing).
The challenging part is that drag can come from many areas. Trying to reduce it by targeting the rear wing and just chopping it up, while a rival can run a larger rear wing for the same total car drag, is always going to be a negative compromise imo. You're asking the driver to do more, with less load in the corners.
To me, the launch spec F1-75 wasn't that bad of a trade off of performance versus drag. It was making a lot of laptime in the corners, to compensate and there were several tracks where it could capitalize. The Sf-23 seems to have gone a different direction in that regard.
Let's wait and see what Ferrari shows up with next week.
I don't think the drag reduction is purely down to the rear wing but overall, it does seem the main strengths of the SF-23 might be different from the F1-75's. I certainly don't think the car is producing less load, but given the new 2023 floor, its likely generated in a different way.
Leclerc statements are to be taken in relative terms, the team had more success in shedding drag than adding downforce.
Cardile has outright said this car has more downforce than the F1-75, unless he's a bald faced liar i would assume that at similar drag levels/setup this car has more downforce.
This wing Ferrari used in testing, was launched in Canada 2022, it largely replaced the previous "medium" wing, the car running that early medium wing had an edge on Red Bull in terms of downforce but was also fairly draggy in comparison.
This wing sacrificed some downforce for sure, but brought straightline speed into touching distance(until Austria at least).
The new for 2023 wing looks like an attempt to increase downforce while doing it's best to keep drag levels fairly low so not a terrible situation.
Last edited by Sevach on 26 Feb 2023, 15:43, edited 1 time in total.
Going out on a limb here, but they may be running low downforce wings to better understand the floor's performance.
The load on the car is a combination of all downforce generating surfaces.
With less wing, they will know for sure what the floor is doing.
I suspect what they are doing during testing has little to do with setting up for the first race.
Ferrari will apply the appropriate wing for the race, and I suspect the car's use of slim wings mostly during testing is not its general philosophy.
Leclerc's comments are interesting. The new tyres may be responsible for his need to adjust driving style.