2023 Scuderia Ferrari F1 Team

[JPower]

CFD eyes, driver body language/press quote interpretation, season long vehicle performance predictions from testing results, I guess we’re back.

Yes we are

Never fails.

Had Ferrari blown everyone away at testing with drivers with beaming smiles, people would say this was bad news like a 2019 redux.

[Venturiation]

If Mercedes is only 0.2s behind Ferrari, is highly likely that they will become faster during the season considering the past few seasons.

Of course i hope this report from Amus isn't true as it would make this 2023 season extremely boring.

remember that the data used for these calculations aren't the same
Mercedes was using the highest DF rear wing when ferrari a bit less

[AR3-GP]

Ferrari has always been incapable of recovering performance compared to the competition during the season. Hopefully it's not true.

This is an overblown trope.

[JPBD1990]

Reading some of Fred’s comments this evening I am feeling more confident than after Charles in the press conference yesterday.

Ultimately I don’t know what’s what, none of us do. But the way Fred is speaking makes me think they are confident.

As someone else commented here - to be using a low downforce setup at a mid downforce track, and not changing it, to test the car in every setting and get a solid baseline to feed into the sim, with the drivers also saying the data has correlated well, to me suggests confidence and calmness. It was only how Charles described them having work to do that finally made me doubt this.

Edit:
Just wanted to add that, for me, I think the most interesting thing will be if Ferrari shows up for the race next week with a mid-high downforce setup and can still manage to match redbull on top speed, then I think we’re in a strong position.

[dxpetrov]

I think everyone will be in awe next week when Ferrari come with the same wing actually. No one would spend the only test available with non optimal car configuration. The copium on this forum is amazing.

[F1ern]

What if they used low df setup on the car so they can examine the car's behavior through a "magnifying glass". If they had high df, it could hide the deficiency of the mechanical grip, bad suspension setup. With low df setup maybe the setup changes cause bigger outcome. Don't know if there is any logic in it, just a thought, we will see what they do in racing conditions.

[LM10]

I think everyone will be in awe next week when Ferrari come with the same wing actually. No one would spend the only test available with non optimal car configuration. The copium on this forum is amazing.

Ferrari having already won last season’s Bahrain GP with a high downforce wing despite having had a draggier car than the SF-23, will out of the blue decide to bolt on a low downforce wing for this year’s Bahrain race? Guess what, it’s perfectly possible not to test a rear wing in testing for that specific race. We have free practice for that matter. Mercedes will also bring a non-tested rear wing next week, as per Mike Elliott.

Some things are so amazingly easy to be answered by simply thinking about it. Try it next time.

[organic]

Yes what happens when they go to Monaco? Oh we have this high downforce spec, but we haven't tested it. Oh well let's just use our spa wing here too

[AR3-GP]

I think everyone will be in awe next week when Ferrari come with the same wing actually. No one would spend the only test available with non optimal car configuration. The copium on this forum is amazing.

Mercedes did...and said they would have a new wing next week.

[AR3-GP]

Yes what happens when they go to Monaco? Oh we have this high downforce spec, but we haven't tested it. Oh well let's just use our spa wing here too

RB didn't exactly test a high downforce spec either to be fair.

What if they used low df setup on the car so they can examine the car's behavior through a "magnifying glass". If they had high df, it could hide the deficiency of the mechanical grip, bad suspension setup. With low df setup maybe the setup changes cause bigger outcome. Don't know if there is any logic in it, just a thought, we will see what they do in racing conditions.

This is an interesting theory.

[organic]

Yes what happens when they go to Monaco? Oh we have this high downforce spec, but we haven't tested it. Oh well let's just use our spa wing here too

RB didn't exactly test a high downforce spec either to be fair.

They used the Hungary/Singapore beam wing from 2022 and a new medium-high df rear wing didn't they? Seems like they tested their 2nd highest df package imo

[Sevach]

Yes what happens when they go to Monaco? Oh we have this high downforce spec, but we haven't tested it. Oh well let's just use our spa wing here too

RB didn't exactly test a high downforce spec either to be fair.

They used the Hungary/Singapore beam wing from 2022 and a new medium-high df rear wing didn't they? Seems like they tested their 2nd highest df package imo

They tested were testing with a fairly "petite" RW the final day (kept the beam wing the same, tremendously cranked), the car still handled like a dream.

[Vanja #66]

What if they used low df setup on the car so they can examine the car's behavior through a "magnifying glass". If they had high df, it could hide the deficiency of the mechanical grip, bad suspension setup. With low df setup maybe the setup changes cause bigger outcome. Don't know if there is any logic in it, just a thought, we will see what they do in racing conditions.

Yes, that's one of the things you want to examine if you have some tyre problems, in this case more a consequence of TD039 than an inherit initial problem of 2022 car.

It's all connected, the team is looking at every item to improve aero efficiency, both separately and collectively. Meaning - reduce the drag but try to keep the downforce. It's not a bad thing if you slightly over-correct in the first step, especially if you get to induce and examine other issues. The problem with rear wing in specific is that it's the last major element in the chain, it's affected by all others and sometimes you can't get enough downforce on it without increasing drag beyond what you set as the limit.

So if you manage to set everything up for very efficient and clean airflow around rear wing (which is exactly the logic behing tight engine cover and clean sidepod top surface) you ensure your drag penalty for extra downforce will be minimal. This way even small angle changes on the wing can bring the most downforce for a drag penalty. So it's a shame for the broken new wing, it would have been interesting to see it in action.

All of this doesn't mean that Ferrari has a lot more pace in their car, just that there are obvious ways to correct the problem they had. We will see what their setup direction for the car in Bahrain race will be in less than a week.

[dialtone]

Among the things I think we know for sure is that they have no correlation issues from the aero side. It would be unlikely the use the wrong wing because they have miscalculated the downforce they get.

We also know they wanted to run scans to setup the simulator. The majority of races on the calendar are going to use the wing they used in this pre-season test, just like RBR used that mid-low DF wing the whole season last year. While not a great test track for aero, Bahrain has a decent enough mix of slow, medium and high speed corners to collect data for the rest of the season.

A thought I have is that in 2 of the test days Ferrari had their fastest times for both drivers within less than 0.05s:
day 1: 1:33.267 - 1:33.253, day 3: 1:31.024 - 1:31.036
and for day 2 they were 0.24 apart. I'm not saying they were necessarily running to a delta, but I'm also not convinced they were pushing the car much. I'm skeptical that between hot morning and cool evening they only managed to have the same exact time, I think Ferrari wanted to see how tires behaved at different temperature and asked drivers to match each other's time.



Look at this lap, the second half of the lap they basically have no gap difference, S3 is off by 0.003 despite day/night, and even before it's negligible.

They've tested all weekend, no race sims just data collection. I'm worried too for the season but not so much because of what Ferrari showed but more so because of what RBR showed. I'll wait next week though.

[AR3-GP]

Practically speaking, it's quite difficult to ask two drivers to do the same laptime. Nevermind within 0.005 of a second. Especially two drivers with different driving style.