Ferrari SF23

[aleks_ader]

This kind of oscillation surely has some adverse effect on whole underfloor performance. Some pulsating effect could be at play here. its even measurable tho? Does trade-off between CoFG and assumed temperate loss outweigh it all?

For linear flex i m sure they do some flexing tests otherwise 50-60% scale model data would be totally unusable. Do teams simulate such oscillations events in wind tunnel also? If yes, then in feel sorry for all engineers. How on earth can can u approximate and work with that in mind is mindboggling

EDIT!: Those Osculations became more and more prevalent in last 5-6 yrs

[Sevach]

Some cool shots today in damp conditions.
Notice the water vapor in front of the floor inlet, quite a pressure drop there it seems.
https://i.postimg.cc/WbkZwxDV/ferrari-sf23.gif

Sorry for the quality and framing, I'm not very good with OBS.

Quite severe rear wing oscillations going on.

Reminds me of the first time the team tried single pillar(Bahrain testing).

[ferrarifire]

Are there any major upadates in pipeline ? Hope ferrari fixes the suspension geometry issue before the season end..

[organic]

Are there any major upadates in pipeline ? Hope ferrari fixes the suspension geometry issue before the season end..

Is there any evidence the suspension geometry is a problem at the moment?

[ferrarifire]

Ferrari not able to generate the enough heat on the tire has been an issue ..this is one of the reason Ferrari is having inconsistent performance

[ringo]

Yes but now tyre deg is fine.
Ive always contended that the suspension is fine and it's their floor that is the issue.
It's easier to have a better behaving floor that performes at all platform heights throughout the race as the fuel burns, than a poor floor with a suspension that tries to keep that poor floor in it's narrow operating window over the whole race distance. This is my opinion.
Ferrari will find more solutions from aero than they will mechanical.

[F1NAC]

Yes but now tyre deg is fine.
Ive always contended that the suspension is fine and it's their floor that is the issue.
It's easier to have a better behaving floor that performes at all platform heights throughout the race as the fuel burns, than a poor floor with a suspension that tries to keep that poor floor in it's narrow operating window over the whole race distance. This is my opinion.
Ferrari will find more solutions from aero than they will mechanical.

Tyre deg is fine because they have to manage heavily. Still way way off RB

[LM10]

Tyre deg is fine because they have to manage heavily. Still way way off RB

It’s just not true that Ferrari’s recently improved tyre deg comes from simply managing.

But let’s assume what you’re saying is true, they must have still improved one way or another because they’re not falling behind in the races anymore like it was the case in the first races of the season. They were sitting ducks.

[Vanja #66]

Ferrari not able to generate the enough heat on the tire has been an issue ..this is one of the reason Ferrari is having inconsistent performance

This tyre temperature situation has been up and down over the season. In Bahrain they had a too aggressive setup and degraded a bit more than others. In Jeddah they over-corrected and suffered with slow pace on hard tyres a lot. In Australia the car had a good pace and no degradation for Sainz, in Baku Leclerc did his thing and managed to put the car on podium. Miami was very weird for Leclerc, it seems like the team didn't repair it properly since it wasn't behaving on Sunday as well as before. Monaco wasn't as good as it could have been since Leclerc got a grid drop because of Xavi so what should have been an easy podium turned out to be a lovely P6.

In Barcelona they changed the aero a lot and in the first race they didn't use it fully due to improper setup. After the Barcelona 2024-tyre-test they found a few things so they started managing the tyre temperature and degradation a lot better. The race in Canada was very good, Austria as well. For me it's still unclear what has changed with new Pirelli tyres since Silverstone, but that race was done way too conservative regarding tyre strategy. Hungary to me looked like they had big problems with getting the tyres to work well (whether it was too much or too little temperature I don't know). Today, the car was actually quite good on tyres and basically very little behind Perez until Leclerc had to start saving the fuel and lost 8-9s in the final 5 laps. Maybe Hungary was a bad setup choice with insufficient practice time and washed-up track, who knows...

Overall, the problem with suspension isn't getting the tyres in the right window since they managed to achieve that as early as Australia I'd say, but rather getting the floor consistently in the right ride height window in the race. The new floor in Austria was a step back from launch-spec floor in terms of tunnel throat height, so they may have given up some raw downforce in search for something else. However, the car still loses the most between Q and Race, which remains a consistent feature. If there were some doubts after 4-5 races, after all the floor and other aero changes we now know for sure the suspension was not designed in a way that allows the car to run as low to the ground as RB19 and some other cars at the start of the race and this remains the biggest issue. Due to this, you have uneven downforce levels between the start and the end of the race and this makes managing the tyres that much harder - which is exactly what caused them trouble in Bahrain and Jeddah in two very different ways.

Edit: I did forget to mention one point about tyres. When there are weekends or just races with mixed conditions or even dry but with big changes in track temperature, Ferrari has been having problems even last year. This speaks of a lack of depth of operating the tyres. So even when they nail the setup for an expected track temp, the car suffers from variations more than other cars. In truth, this is less of an issue for the overall performance in a race than the ride height operating window, since these situations are not present all the time.

[hape]

Ferrari not able to generate the enough heat on the tire has been an issue ..this is one of the reason Ferrari is having inconsistent performance

This tyre temperature situation has been up and down over the season. In Bahrain they had a too aggressive setup and degraded a bit more than others. In Jeddah they over-corrected and suffered with slow pace on hard tyres a lot. In Australia the car had a good pace and no degradation for Sainz, in Baku Leclerc did his thing and managed to put the car on podium. Miami was very weird for Leclerc, it seems like the team didn't repair it properly since it wasn't behaving on Sunday as well as before. Monaco wasn't as good as it could have been since Leclerc got a grid drop because of Xavi so what should have been an easy podium turned out to be a lovely P6.

In Barcelona they changed the aero a lot and in the first race they didn't use it fully due to improper setup. After the Barcelona 2024-tyre-test they found a few things so they started managing the tyre temperature and degradation a lot better. The race in Canada was very good, Austria as well. For me it's still unclear what has changed with new Pirelli tyres since Silverstone, but that race was done way too conservative regarding tyre strategy. Hungary to me looked like they had big problems with getting the tyres to work well (whether it was too much or too little temperature I don't know). Today, the car was actually quite good on tyres and basically very little behind Perez until Leclerc had to start saving the fuel and lost 8-9s in the final 5 laps. Maybe Hungary was a bad setup choice with insufficient practice time and washed-up track, who knows...

Overall, the problem with suspension isn't getting the tyres in the right window since they managed to achieve that as early as Australia I'd say, but rather getting the floor consistently in the right ride height window in the race. The new floor in Austria was a step back from launch-spec floor in terms of tunnel throat height, so they may have given up some raw downforce in search for something else. However, the car still loses the most between Q and Race, which remains a consistent feature. If there were some doubts after 4-5 races, after all the floor and other aero changes we now know for sure the suspension was not designed in a way that allows the car to run as low to the ground as RB19 and some other cars at the start of the race and this remains the biggest issue. Due to this, you have uneven downforce levels between the start and the end of the race and this makes managing the tyres that much harder - which is exactly what caused them trouble in Bahrain and Jeddah in two very different ways.

Edit: I did forget to mention one point about tyres. When there are weekends or just races with mixed conditions or even dry but with big changes in track temperature, Ferrari has been having problems even last year. This speaks of a lack of depth of operating the tyres. So even when they nail the setup for an expected track temp, the car suffers from variations more than other cars. In truth, this is less of an issue for the overall performance in a race than the ride height operating window, since these situations are not present all the time.

Yes, although they seem to understand the new tyres better than at Silverstone, tyre temperature still seems a critical thing with Ferrari. It was clearly to see yesterday when it started raining, Hamilton could close the gap to Leclerc quite comfortable and almost collected DRS. Luckily for Leclerc the rain stopped and within a few laps he was able to pull away again. Now this could be chosen setup of course but I think all teams went for uncompromised setup for dry weather.

Did Leclerc have to save fuel in the end? It looked he only dropped the pace a little because Hamilton choose to do a pitstop for fresh tyres to haunt the fastest lap but he was no threat anymore for the podium.

[codetower]

This tyre temperature situation has been up and down over the season. In Bahrain they had a too aggressive setup and degraded a bit more than others. In Jeddah they over-corrected and suffered with slow pace on hard tyres a lot. In Australia the car had a good pace and no degradation for Sainz, in Baku Leclerc did his thing and managed to put the car on podium. Miami was very weird for Leclerc, it seems like the team didn't repair it properly since it wasn't behaving on Sunday as well as before. Monaco wasn't as good as it could have been since Leclerc got a grid drop because of Xavi so what should have been an easy podium turned out to be a lovely P6.

In Barcelona they changed the aero a lot and in the first race they didn't use it fully due to improper setup. After the Barcelona 2024-tyre-test they found a few things so they started managing the tyre temperature and degradation a lot better. The race in Canada was very good, Austria as well. For me it's still unclear what has changed with new Pirelli tyres since Silverstone, but that race was done way too conservative regarding tyre strategy. Hungary to me looked like they had big problems with getting the tyres to work well (whether it was too much or too little temperature I don't know). Today, the car was actually quite good on tyres and basically very little behind Perez until Leclerc had to start saving the fuel and lost 8-9s in the final 5 laps. Maybe Hungary was a bad setup choice with insufficient practice time and washed-up track, who knows...

Overall, the problem with suspension isn't getting the tyres in the right window since they managed to achieve that as early as Australia I'd say, but rather getting the floor consistently in the right ride height window in the race. The new floor in Austria was a step back from launch-spec floor in terms of tunnel throat height, so they may have given up some raw downforce in search for something else. However, the car still loses the most between Q and Race, which remains a consistent feature. If there were some doubts after 4-5 races, after all the floor and other aero changes we now know for sure the suspension was not designed in a way that allows the car to run as low to the ground as RB19 and some other cars at the start of the race and this remains the biggest issue. Due to this, you have uneven downforce levels between the start and the end of the race and this makes managing the tyres that much harder - which is exactly what caused them trouble in Bahrain and Jeddah in two very different ways.

Edit: I did forget to mention one point about tyres. When there are weekends or just races with mixed conditions or even dry but with big changes in track temperature, Ferrari has been having problems even last year. This speaks of a lack of depth of operating the tyres. So even when they nail the setup for an expected track temp, the car suffers from variations more than other cars. In truth, this is less of an issue for the overall performance in a race than the ride height operating window, since these situations are not present all the time.

Yes, although they seem to understand the new tyres better than at Silverstone, tyre temperature still seems a critical thing with Ferrari. It was clearly to see yesterday when it started raining, Hamilton could close the gap to Leclerc quite comfortable and almost collected DRS. Luckily for Leclerc the rain stopped and within a few laps he was able to pull away again. Now this could be chosen setup of course but I think all teams went for uncompromised setup for dry weather.

Did Leclerc have to save fuel in the end? It looked he only dropped the pace a little because Hamilton choose to do a pitstop for fresh tyres to haunt the fastest lap but he was no threat anymore for the podium.

Yes, he mentioned he went on fuel saving towards the end.

https://www.motorsportweek.com/2023/07/ ... f1-podium/

[organic]

Chart showing upgrades brought to the car at each race as of the summer break

Made by @LuisFeF1 on Twitter



If you'd like to compare to the other teams:

[organic]

If he's staying and agreed to it already, he's convinced of the team Vasseur is putting together. For Leclerc and a few other drivers, pay is not even a top 5 priority at this time of their careers. He could easily wait till early 2024 and see what's going on with Mercedes and AMR.

It's also mentioned Sainz might be looking at Alpine. Vasseur refused to comment on Binotto going there, so that's basically 99% confirmed. It would make sense for Sainz to reunite with a TP who favoured him so much and get a chance to be a clear #1 in the team and have everything built around him. Would probably be the final chance to do it in his career.

Ferrari brought the reshaped floor inlet to Miami and the reprofiled fences to Austria.

Austria update was basically a whole new floor, tunnels were clearly higher than before.

Yes I agree with you that they've mad echanges to the forward throat section along the reshaped floor fences. But looking in from the diffuser at some photos from Austria there seems to be no changes to the boat section and the inner most side of the tunnnel. I know not super conclusive at all but I feel they haven't made major changes other than the formerly mentioned areas.

The whole floor throat was much higher post-austria. There's a post in the sf-23 thread showing this a while back

Pre-Canada negative



Pre-Canada positive (27th April)



Post-canada positive (Austria GP)



And now positive comparison whilst mounted to car.

Pre-Canada



Post-canada (ignore highlighted floor edge)



To me the differences are pretty self-explanatory and large. The throat was being pushed as low as possible at Bahrain and they learnt it wasn't working. There are already wholesale changes in the manner that Vanja describes to the floor and also the floor concept itself as of Austria

[Vanja #66]

Lovely summary Organic, thanks!

[gordonthegun]

Wings: