Ferrari SF23

[AR3-GP]

Ferrari, by limiting centreline cooling to a minimum—and so having the smallest cross section of the bodywork behind the roll bar and the engine cover of any car (save Haas)—must be benefiting from improved flow to the RW, yes? So we could expect that Ferrari’s wing could be sized to a lower projected cross-sectional area for the same DF as on a wing on rival cars with larger inlet scoops and various cannons.

So, a same for same comparison between wing areas might not be valid when comparing to other cars.

True, but their roll hoop inlet was the same size last year when they were running larger wings and likely had a better performing floor than RB before TD039.

Right. Maybe with the turbulence from the cockpit and halo there’s no real advantage for RW performance having a narrow inlet and slim engine cover.

This then begs the question of why they’ve done this instead of, say, a cannon design and so allowing them to remove the kick-up and exit at the rear of the sidepods and have a downwash design like all the other teams?

Well they've probably evaluated this in CFD and/or windtunnel, and it's not good for their concept.

[Sevach]

Ferrari combines their narrow roll hoop with a bunch of aero tricks to minimize cockpit losses, roll hoop horns, the largest shark fin on the grid and new for 2023 horizontal cockpit blades, all aimed at clearing the turbulence that comes from the cockpit.

Some of those simply wouldn't fit in the legality boxes of teams that run with fatter airboxes and center cooling.

As to why don't they go for downwash? Ferrari simply seems to believe they can get more from air going around the sidepods than air going over the sidepods(which they "trap" with their bathtub).
In terms of their physical components i don't think there's anything blocking a downwash design, they could easily switch to something similar to the Aston Martin.

It's simply a different design path.

[Vanja #66]

I will note it doesn't necessarily say they will have a fix in Australia.

It says they will have a new front wing by Australia. The article also mentions unexpected understeer.. if they did not expect this understeer, with the lead times for something like a new front wing it cannot be an intentional & direct fix. It's entirely plausible that the rumoured new spec fw could be designed to bring lower front load to gain efficiency overall, also plausible it's designed to bring more front load. We can't say and neither does formula1uno at this stage

This is now a (very juicy) car topic, so lets continue in car thread

This word is indeed important. Unexpected might mean outboard zone, where angles are already low, is flexing and twisting too much so the effective angle is even lower. Or the whole moveable flap group is twisting too much. This would be an easy mexhanical fix, to redesign and strengthen the brackets, making it possible to bring a solution in 4 weeks. Such work is not a repair so can't be done in the garage, wings would need to be dissasembled and rebuilt, taking up some time but not too much.

[MV8]

I have a question, the "Sidepod duct" was open or was covered during the tests?

Edit: Okay, I just saw the post about that, my bad

[Sevach]

I will note it doesn't necessarily say they will have a fix in Australia.

It says they will have a new front wing by Australia. The article also mentions unexpected understeer.. if they did not expect this understeer, with the lead times for something like a new front wing it cannot be an intentional & direct fix. It's entirely plausible that the rumoured new spec fw could be designed to bring lower front load to gain efficiency overall, also plausible it's designed to bring more front load. We can't say and neither does formula1uno at this stage

This is now a (very juicy) car topic, so lets continue in car thread

This word is indeed important. Unexpected might mean outboard zone, where angles are already low, is flexing and twisting too much so the effective angle is even lower. Or the whole moveable flap group is twisting too much. This would be an easy mexhanical fix, to redesign and strengthen the brackets, making it possible to bring a solution in 4 weeks. Such work is not a repair so can't be done in the garage, wings would need to be dissasembled and rebuilt, taking up some time but not too much.

They've expanded the area that flexes up and down, they might be shedding more downforce with speed than they originally anticipated.

[MV8]

https://i.postimg.cc/fRkLhfzm/image.png

Can't neccessarily see if it's open or closed, but the duct still looks present.

[Vanja #66]

It won't be closed off, it's an important duct for flow around engine cover and extracting hot air through the louvres.

[JPower]

I will note it doesn't necessarily say they will have a fix in Australia.

It says they will have a new front wing by Australia. The article also mentions unexpected understeer.. if they did not expect this understeer, with the lead times for something like a new front wing it cannot be an intentional & direct fix. It's entirely plausible that the rumoured new spec fw could be designed to bring lower front load to gain efficiency overall, also plausible it's designed to bring more front load. We can't say and neither does formula1uno at this stage

This is now a (very juicy) car topic, so lets continue in car thread

This word is indeed important. Unexpected might mean outboard zone, where angles are already low, is flexing and twisting too much so the effective angle is even lower. Or the whole moveable flap group is twisting too much. This would be an easy mexhanical fix, to redesign and strengthen the brackets, making it possible to bring a solution in 4 weeks. Such work is not a repair so can't be done in the garage, wings would need to be dissasembled and rebuilt, taking up some time but not too much.

They've expanded the area that flexes up and down, they might be shedding more downforce with speed than they originally anticipated.

Might be the reason they ran that wing flex test at the end of Day 1...

[dialtone]

This is now a (very juicy) car topic, so lets continue in car thread

This word is indeed important. Unexpected might mean outboard zone, where angles are already low, is flexing and twisting too much so the effective angle is even lower. Or the whole moveable flap group is twisting too much. This would be an easy mexhanical fix, to redesign and strengthen the brackets, making it possible to bring a solution in 4 weeks. Such work is not a repair so can't be done in the garage, wings would need to be dissasembled and rebuilt, taking up some time but not too much.

They've expanded the area that flexes up and down, they might be shedding more downforce with speed than they originally anticipated.

Might be the reason they ran that wing flex test at the end of Day 1...

It wouldn't necessarily be too surprising if they tried to save too much weight and ended up with a part too flexible. DRS flap, front wing too flexible, vanity panel in the front wing was also not reinforced enough.

[Xyz22]

They've expanded the area that flexes up and down, they might be shedding more downforce with speed than they originally anticipated.

Might be the reason they ran that wing flex test at the end of Day 1...

It wouldn't necessarily be too surprising if they tried to save too much weight and ended up with a part too flexible. DRS flap, front wing too flexible, vanity panel in the front wing was also not reinforced enough.

That was a mounting error according to the team IIRC.

[organic]

Reposted from team thread as it was somewhat burried there with a discussion about drivers & was well pointed out that this is about the car so should also belong here:

https://www.formu1a.uno/leclerc-preoccu ... -di-guida/

The Ferrari SF-23 is limited in front
The SF-23 is a very different car from the previous one. The main innovations reside at the front, with completely revised mechanics , and in the non-visible part of the underbody, in addition to the more evident modifications in the front wing and side pods. Innovations that have radically changed the characteristics of the Italian car, now a missile on a straight line but which struggles more than the F1-75 in corners, with more efficiency but with a balance that, especially in slow and medium curves speed , still missing .

The new born in Maranello does not have its weak point in the rear, as it might initially seem, but the problem is to be found at the front. Leaving aside the first day used to collect data on the track, to be compared with those coming from the factory instruments, the second and last day were used to optimize and extract the potential of the SF-23. Despite working a lot in terms of setup, it came out that the new Italian car suffered from understeer on entry and in the middle of the corner, which turned into oversteer on exit. With the current front wing it was not possible to solve the problem, given that"even at maximum clicks, we didn't get rid of the understeer, especially in the hottest hours of the day" a technician from the Italian team let us know.

Its not surprising when you make larger changes to also run into teething problems in terms of car balance. But it does not bode well for Bahrain if they had understeer with the med-low wing

Is there anything they can do for this weekend that could help?

[AR3-GP]

Reposted from team thread as it was somewhat burried there with a discussion about drivers & was well pointed out that this is about the car so should also belong here:

https://www.formu1a.uno/leclerc-preoccu ... -di-guida/

The Ferrari SF-23 is limited in front
The SF-23 is a very different car from the previous one. The main innovations reside at the front, with completely revised mechanics , and in the non-visible part of the underbody, in addition to the more evident modifications in the front wing and side pods. Innovations that have radically changed the characteristics of the Italian car, now a missile on a straight line but which struggles more than the F1-75 in corners, with more efficiency but with a balance that, especially in slow and medium curves speed , still missing .

The new born in Maranello does not have its weak point in the rear, as it might initially seem, but the problem is to be found at the front. Leaving aside the first day used to collect data on the track, to be compared with those coming from the factory instruments, the second and last day were used to optimize and extract the potential of the SF-23. Despite working a lot in terms of setup, it came out that the new Italian car suffered from understeer on entry and in the middle of the corner, which turned into oversteer on exit. With the current front wing it was not possible to solve the problem, given that"even at maximum clicks, we didn't get rid of the understeer, especially in the hottest hours of the day" a technician from the Italian team let us know.

Its not surprising when you make larger changes to also run into teething problems in terms of car balance. But it does not bode well for Bahrain if they had understeer with the med-low wing

Is there anything they can do for this weekend that could help?

The balance would improve by raising the rear rideheight (loss of floor downforce shifts balance forwards), but at the cost of performance I suspect.

[jambuka]

As long as they have not discovered an incurable flaw, with almost a week of data crunching and optimizations between testing and the race setup will be better for the race. We should wait till FP3, they might still be optimizing till then.

[Vanja #66]

Might be the reason they ran that wing flex test at the end of Day 1...

Yes, it would explain a lot.

The balance would improve by raising the rear ride height (loss of floor downforce shifts balance forwards), but at the cost of performance I suspect.

Ehhh, it depends on what your floor is doing and where its CoP is. However, the front wings are now way too high for a small rake to make any meaningful difference. Big rakes where driving the front wings quite hard from 2010-2021 since they were much closer to the reference plane. However, small rakes still had limited effects, whereas now these effects could be practically non-existent.

[dialtone]

In the "all cars onboard" video it didn't seem like the understeer was that bad.



Basically there's a smidge in T1 and T11, and some understeer in T8 where Carlos misses the Apex on entry but the steering input is about the same as one would expect to turn the car. Even at T4 with the nice opening on exit Ferrari seems alright overall.

I don't see any understeer in the higher speed corners compared to RedBull, seems equivalent there to me.

If I were a betting man I think the understeer is less the issue while moving from understeer to oversteer may be more the problem, in T14-15 Carlos has another little bit of understeer on entry and then the car turns oversteery on exit. If they have an aero issue on the wing at low speeds that then engages well above a certain threshold I can imagine that it would be hard to balance the car well and for the driver to properly predict the behavior.