Ferrari SF23

[ryaan2904]

Fred said that the tyre deg is a set-up issue. I wonder if they will be able to fix it this season given it has carried on from the 2nd half of the last season & still they dont have any solution for it.

I suspect floor is the key here since the only two teams good with tyre deg are RB & AM.

Front end limitations and sub optimal rear wing choice. Both root causes of tyre degradation. Neither of these could be resolved at this race. They were forced to deal with it. We lacked overall downforce to put it short.

I don't think its that small issue. Ferrari is the only car porpoising so much this year. Even Sainz complained about it towards the end. Pat said in the testing that SF23 was the only car porpoising so much this year.

Last year I thought that the car philosophy was right because F1-75 had good pace compared to RB18 & that the porpoising was due to suspension not being good enough. This year SF23 has been upgraded in all those areas. But if you look at the entire grid right now you can see that the only cars not having tyre degradation problem are the cars that went with RB philosophy. Haas, Merc & Ferrari all have tyre deg issues. Seeing this I am starting to doubt if Ferrari went in wrong direction with the car philosophy. No matter how much they develop this concept the inherent problems are not going away unless they go the RB philosophy.

SF23 had slower race pace even compared to F1-75 this race. Which is unacceptable given all the improvements with tyres & PU. SF23 has also lost the strengths of F1-75 by trying to improve the straight line speed which also is not much advantage (just 4kph).

All in all they have not been able to fix any issues the car had for the last 7-8 months. The only improvement this year being PU reliability. Even considering the high deg nature of Bahrain track SF23 is nowhere near the pace of RB19 (VER was not even pushing this race & had 1s advantage) so challenging for championship is not at all realistic.

I would be reluctant to put it down to just 'RB philosophy'. If you remember, Ferr had the best tyre deg characteristics last yr, before the TD and the french gp upgrade.

[sucof]

If I'm not wrong sf23 is the only car with the lower lateral anti crash cone above the floor level (maybe Haas is the same), so if they would like to decide to move towards RB concept, they cannot.
It seems they are very confident and proud of their design... Which is not working.
IMHO it resemble the SF90 with weaker engine.

Why would they want to move to RB concept? How is their design not working exactly?

They had problems with both wings, which forced them to compromise the setup. Literally the simplest thing to do is to add wing downforce and Ferrari has as much room to add wings as RB, if not more. In terms of aerodynamics, chassis (without wings) and floor design are the best on the grid.

Hard to tell if RB is at exactly the same level, but both cars are very low drag and very efficient on aero. Core aero is not where the Red Bull has an advantage, unlike last year.

Sorry but I disagree. Ferrari has had to use small wing to avoid being slower in straights and in corners. The car keep being snappier and requiring a lot of corrections. Moreover it bounces more.
I really do not see this "best of the grid" things.
I see a team that cannot use bigger wings and with small wings do not get a sufficient speed advantage. They are 0.3s or more slower in pole and 0.8s in race conditions.

I think people focus on what they can see, so they attach too much importance to overbody aerodynamics.
The floor and the suspension are, in my opinion, the most important parts in this new regulation set on a car right now.
The RB or Ferrari sidepod arrangement does not make that much of a difference. This is perhaps the reason why Merc is so lost as well. I think RB knows something special about having a special way of suspension and floor working together. Last year, the aero did not change for Ferrari, but they had to change how their floor worked, so everything went south for them.
This year, Ferrari changed both of their suspension... probably because they know that that might be the big differentiator. But you do not learn in one day what RB learned about this in years... I suspect the real secret of Newey's cars are to be found of something in this area. But on this forum, this is what we can talk about the least, since we can not see it, we can not see data and measurements regarding suspension.

[Vanja #66]

Fred said that the tyre deg is a set-up issue. I wonder if they will be able to fix it this season given it has carried on from the 2nd half of the last season & still they dont have any solution for it.

I suspect floor is the key here since the only two teams good with tyre deg are RB & AM.

Floor is the key for tyre deg?

[sucof]

Sorry but I disagree. Ferrari has had to use small wing to avoid being slower in straights and in corners. The car keep being snappier and requiring a lot of corrections. Moreover it bounces more.
I really do not see this "best of the grid" things.
I see a team that cannot use bigger wings and with small wings do not get a sufficient speed advantage. They are 0.3s or more slower in pole and 0.8s in race conditions.

I think people focus on what they can see, so they attach too much importance to overbody aerodynamics.
The floor and the suspension are, in my opinion, the most important parts in this new regulation set on a car right now.
The RB or Ferrari sidepod arrangement does not make that much of a difference. This is perhaps the reason why Merc is so lost as well. I think RB knows something special about having a special way of suspension and floor working together. Last year, the aero did not change for Ferrari, but they had to change how their floor worked, so everything went south for them.
This year, Ferrari changed both of their suspension... probably because they know that that might be the big differentiator. But you do not learn in one day what RB learned about this in years... I suspect the real secret of Newey's cars are to be found of something in this area. But on this forum, this is what we can talk about the least, since we can not see it, we can not see data and measurements regarding suspension.

Seriously what "years" are you talking about? Both teams had same time to build the new car for last season. Whats more is that Ferrari had more time compared to RB to work on the car and still they are not able to solve a fundamental issue of tyre deg.
For 2021 car, RB was fighting the championship till the last race while Ferrari was already working full beans on SF1-75. For 2022, its a known fact that Ferrari switched their development to SF23 way early than RB. This is said by Binotto himself.
So what you are talking about is totally wrong.

I think it is obvious that teams have certain areas where they are ahead of understanding/innovating compared to others. In my post I tried to say that perhaps RB is ahead in understanding how floor and suspension works well together, so that means they might have even years of extra knowledge in this area. I think this might be the reason why Newey designs good cars so many times, and in the new regulations this area is even more important. This could explain why Ferrari changed both its suspension, and it is in basic concept closer to RB than last year. But understanding it, tuning it, or even finding the real thing that makes it work so well takes time. This might be also why Ferrari tested its car so many ways during testing, and why RB just went out doing great times. They know their concept very well.

[Peter Ian Staker]

So with Mercedes throwing up the white flag, it's now just Ferrari fighting the impossible battle against F1 design convergence.
Great.

[Vanja #66]

Since half of AMR23 is Mercedes car the only performance differentiator element remaining is floor of the car.

That is an exceptionally wrong way to look at things, PU, gearbox and rear suspension are not half a car. They have their own chassis, with its own layout, stiffness, weight, etc; their own front suspension which is very different from W14 and the whole car still works. Finally, the entire aero package is completely different. There are very few similarities between the two cars and suspension setup is very different for sure.

I dont think SF23 has the right floor design to work with limits set by TD39. The tyre deg issue only started after it. Also bear in mind that AMR22 had better race pace compared to 1 lap pace. That was since they switched to RB philosophy. Now this year for AMR23 they have a new philosophy which does not follow RB completely. It seems to be a mix of RB & Ferrari philosophy. Now i am not an expert in this but as far as I understand they(Ferrair) cannot just change the floor and expect it to work without changing the whole philosophy of the car.

Tyre deg issues did start after TD39 as we all know - including the team. Tyre degradation is linked to suspension, not aero. Suspension setup range was compromised for F1-75 after TD39 to accommodate the necessary changes, with ride height as the biggest factor that had to change. Ride height messed with both the suspension and the floor aero. The floor downforce reduction can (and apparently did on F1-75) cause further aero balance issues that lead to further performance losses. And we are talking 1-2 tenths per each issue at least, so at least 5 tenths per lap overall + worse tyre degradation than others.

The suspension is always very important and right now with 2022+ regulations it seems to be even more important. It must be able to accommodate various ride height and other setup changes according to the track specifics and how the floor can interact with the track itself, without causing too much bouncing or plank scraping over the bumps. Lets not forget the ride height change with varying fuel loads over the race as well. Ferrari were quite open during SF-23 launch when they said they worked a lot on expanding this setup window with suspension design, are we to believe they made rookie mistakes and made things worse? There is not a single team of engineers on the grid that would do something like that

Having a completely redesigned suspension means you need to re-learn how to set the car up. On top of different floor philosophy than last year (also something Ferrari mentioned) there are big changes to front wing design. All of these things are very complex, their interaction is very complex and needs time to be fully understood and set up accordingly. RB had similar issues with RB18 in the first few races, not counting fuel pump issues leading to DNFs.

Last but not least, if Ferrari moved the floor CoP to the back (which I think it did, seeing how skinny the rear wing is) then having lower load than expected on the front wing might force you to change the ride height and sacrifice some floor downforce so you could balance the car. Or, you just accept gradually bigger understeer in higher speed corners and try to make it work. Or find a compromise between the two, sacrificing some downforce to reduce understeer to bare minimum, which can also lead to further suspension setup issues to make the car feel similar in low speed corners as in high speed ones. Sounds like some of the problems Ferrari talked about over the weekend, doesn't it?

[scuderiabrandon]

Here B Sport also speculating that the degradation could be related to rear suspension setup.

Timestamp: 2:50

[FDD]

Since half of AMR23 is Mercedes car the only performance differentiator element remaining is floor of the car.

That is an exceptionally wrong way to look at things, PU, gearbox and rear suspension are not half a car. They have their own chassis, with its own layout, stiffness, weight, etc; their own front suspension which is very different from W14 and the whole car still works. Finally, the entire aero package is completely different. There are very few similarities between the two cars and suspension setup is very different for sure.

I dont think SF23 has the right floor design to work with limits set by TD39. The tyre deg issue only started after it. Also bear in mind that AMR22 had better race pace compared to 1 lap pace. That was since they switched to RB philosophy. Now this year for AMR23 they have a new philosophy which does not follow RB completely. It seems to be a mix of RB & Ferrari philosophy. Now i am not an expert in this but as far as I understand they(Ferrair) cannot just change the floor and expect it to work without changing the whole philosophy of the car.

Tyre deg issues did start after TD39 as we all know - including the team. Tyre degradation is linked to suspension, not aero. Suspension setup range was compromised for F1-75 after TD39 to accommodate the necessary changes, with ride height as the biggest factor that had to change. Ride height messed with both the suspension and the floor aero. The floor downforce reduction can (and apparently did on F1-75) cause further aero balance issues that lead to further performance losses. And we are talking 1-2 tenths per each issue at least, so at least 5 tenths per lap overall + worse tyre degradation than others.

The suspension is always very important and right now with 2022+ regulations it seems to be even more important. It must be able to accommodate various ride height and other setup changes according to the track specifics and how the floor can interact with the track itself, without causing too much bouncing or plank scraping over the bumps. Lets not forget the ride height change with varying fuel loads over the race as well. Ferrari were quite open during SF-23 launch when they said they worked a lot on expanding this setup window with suspension design, are we to believe they made rookie mistakes and made things worse? There is not a single team of engineers on the grid that would do something like that

Having a completely redesigned suspension means you need to re-learn how to set the car up. On top of different floor philosophy than last year (also something Ferrari mentioned) there are big changes to front wing design. All of these things are very complex, their interaction is very complex and needs time to be fully understood and set up accordingly. RB had similar issues with RB18 in the first few races, not counting fuel pump issues leading to DNFs.

Last but not least, if Ferrari moved the floor CoP to the back (which I think it did, seeing how skinny the rear wing is) then having lower load than expected on the front wing might force you to change the ride height and sacrifice some floor downforce so you could balance the car. Or, you just accept gradually bigger understeer in higher speed corners and try to make it work. Or find a compromise between the two, sacrificing some downforce to reduce understeer to bare minimum, which can also lead to further suspension setup issues to make the car feel similar in low speed corners as in high speed ones. Sounds like some of the problems Ferrari talked about over the weekend, doesn't it?

Regarding this part:
"... if Ferrari moved the floor CoP to the back (which I think it did, seeing how skinny the rear wing is) then having lower load than expected on the front wing might force you to change the ride height and sacrifice some floor downforce so you could balance the car."
Does this means that they have to change to a bigger ride height to sacrifice some floor downforce?

[Vanja #66]

Regarding this part:
"... if Ferrari moved the floor CoP to the back (which I think it did, seeing how skinny the rear wing is) then having lower load than expected on the front wing might force you to change the ride height and sacrifice some floor downforce so you could balance the car."
Does this means that they have to change to a bigger ride height to sacrifice some floor downforce?

We can't know that unless the team confirms it. B Sport is of course correct about causes of rear tyre deg, although rear suspension alone may not be the main cause, slightly less aero load in the rear could also contribute along with suspension so we can't exclude this completely. The team is well aware of this and they put effort over the winter to solve it, they need a bit more time to find the proper setup for lower deg and they have some pace to claw back...

[ing.]

I still contend that a big part of Ferrari’s issues—an obvious lack of DF—is a result of going their own way with a side pod design not promoting a downwash. Merc—with their own pod design—have admitted to a lack of DF.

The fact that a majority of teams, after much testing, followed RB and not Ferrari says a lot. Haas is dependent on Ferrari so stayed with that concept but they were probably the worst performing car out there yesterday. The fact they use Ferrari supplied suspension is not a good reassurance either.

Obviously, the underfloor design is maybe the biggest contributor to their lack of pace and this could be due to Ferrari’s floor design handicapped by the upper aero flow regime.

Pointing to this car’s quali performance is a bit of a red herring because, unlike in the race, in quali the DRS is open so limiting the performance losses due to drag needed to generate DF. So if the car is lacking DF—and its associated drag—and can benefit from some drag reduction the performance will be ok for one lap as the tires won’t degrade. But in the race there lesser DF—achieved at a lesser efficiency—will result in either going slower (with added DF) or killing the tires, which is what we saw yesterday.

[dialtone]

I still contend that a big part of Ferrari’s issues—an obvious lack of DF—is a result of going their own way with a side pod design not promoting a downwash. Merc—with their own pod design—have admitted to a lack of DF.

I don't think it's obvious at all, in fact I don't think it's true at all.

The car was among the best performing cars in the fast corners T5-6-7 and T11



This is on the quali lap where you can see LEC keeping fast speed through T5-6-7 and T11 than VER.

And this is a lap in the race where VER was 0.8s faster than LEC (lap 11 so early enough in the race that everyone was still going pretty fast):



You can see for yourself that where time loss happens is in traction zones.

The underfloor is not the primary factor in slow corners, below a certain speed the ground effect is meaningless compared to wing and mechanical grip. So no, it's not the aero philosophy of the car is the issue, the performance in high speed corners, even while massively nursing tires, is on par with VER.

[nico5]

I still contend that a big part of Ferrari’s issues—an obvious lack of DF—is a result of going their own way with a side pod design not promoting a downwash. Merc—with their own pod design—have admitted to a lack of DF.

I don't think it's obvious at all, in fact I don't think it's true at all.

The car was among the best performing cars in the fast corners T5-6-7 and T11

https://i.imgur.com/0ZaZ7hC.jpeg

This is on the quali lap where you can see LEC keeping fast speed through T5-6-7 and T11 than VER.

And this is a lap in the race where VER was 0.8s faster than LEC (lap 11 so early enough in the race that everyone was still going pretty fast):

https://i.imgur.com/wrN3U0I.jpeg

You can see for yourself that where time loss happens is in traction zones.

The underfloor is not the primary factor in slow corners, below a certain speed the ground effect is meaningless compared to wing and mechanical grip. So no, it's not the aero philosophy of the car is the issue, the performance in high speed corners, even while massively nursing tires, is on par with VER.

Yeah but what if you have to compromise the mechanical setup to achieve that level of aero performance? Isn't that part of what makes a good aero design for it not to impose setup compromises on you?
Since you can generate telemetries, check Leclerc v Sainz throughout qualifying. You will see Carlos being constantly >0.1 faster in T1-2 (except Q2 run 2) and lose massively in the change of direction of T6-7. (Sainz also happened to have more bottoming or porpoising during the race and complained about it). But that's qualifying, when you can abuse the tires and send them 25 degrees above their ceiling. Do that in the race and you end up with 3 second thermal deg over 10 laps.

[ing.]

I don't think it's obvious at all, in fact I don't think it's true at all.

The car was among the best performing cars in the fast corners T5-6-7 and T11

https://i.imgur.com/0ZaZ7hC.jpeg

This is on the quali lap where you can see LEC keeping fast speed through T5-6-7 and T11 than VER.

And this is a lap in the race where VER was 0.8s faster than LEC (lap 11 so early enough in the race that everyone was still going pretty fast):

https://i.imgur.com/wrN3U0I.jpeg

You can see for yourself that where time loss happens is in traction zones.

The underfloor is not the primary factor in slow corners, below a certain speed the ground effect is meaningless compared to wing and mechanical grip. So no, it's not the aero philosophy of the car is the issue, the performance in high speed corners, even while massively nursing tires, is on par with VER.

Yes, good points so maybe I should have said more specifically they’re lacking a good, stable DF level at all attitudes and ride heights—i.e., a relatively flat (not peaky) aero map. Not to mention that the suspension compliance—for traction—needn’t be compromised to maintain aero performance.

DF is important at all speeds and pretty sure the floor contribution is not limited to high speeds. RB’s floor—with the most complex design as seen last year—must be generating a good amount of DF at slow corners.

[LM10]

I can’t believe people are talking about a lack of downforce for the SF-23 due to it’s concept when in fact it did not show any lack of downforce at all in Bahrain and secondly - which immediately should throw the argument of the concept being the problem in the garbage bin - the F1-75 with obviously the same concept was the car with most downforce last season…

[hollus]

Quite a few posts with lap time deltas to other teams, or 2021 cars, or what AMR did compared to what Mercedes dis compared to what RB did... poofed away.

This car. Hardware. Use the team threads for championship performance related stuff.

A reminder to everyone but specially to the new people (welcome!).
We know the season has just started and the passions are high, but...

The car threads are specially strictly moderated in this forum. Stick to this car and to hardware in the car threads.
Team politics and other team things, please in the team threads.
Lap times, happy faces, sensations and will they be faster/slower than XYZ, either in the team threads or in the race threads.

If your post is in this thread and is not centering on this car, the physical car, it might have been or might be deleted or moved.
Let's keep the awesome car threads on this forum
a) focused on the hardware and
b) awesome.

Anyone counting how many posts land, daily, on the car threads, should see why this needed.

Thanks.