2025 Scuderia Ferrari F1 Team

[MattLightBlue]

I think that this issue is being exaggerated by how McLaren has developed their car better than the others.
In a parallel universe with McLaren 5th-6th force (as it was in 2022-early 2023) we would be talking about a fast car that needs to manage minor issues.
The reality is Red Bull and Mercedes are often worse cars than Ferrari this season.

BTW, I think that we will not win any race this year, not even Monza or Baku.

[catent]

Months of PR about this magical suspension and they still are at the starting point.

Ferrari - the actual team themselves - have been quiet about their suspension in order to keep expectations low; the only people hyping-up expectations are fans of the team ... and apparently rival fans attempting to strawman in order to make Ferrari an easy target for their ridicule.

They are certainly ahead of their starting point, and are arguably the 2nd quickest car on the grid, which does not seem half-bad considering the mockery and derision they receive here on a daily basis.

[AR3-GP]

https://it.motorsport.com/f1/news/f1-fe ... /10748680/

Interesting details in this article.

No one remembers Lewis Hamilton's pole position in the sprint race in China and then the subsequent victory of the seven-time world champion in the Shanghai race. It seemed like the beginning of a fairy tale after 100 km dominated without anyone keeping up with the Englishman, McLaren understood. Then came an "alarm" from the FIA: the technical stewards had detected an abnormal wear of the skate and had advised the Scuderia to get in place. A warning that was not sufficiently heeded, given that Lewis was removed from the standings in the Chinese GP after a mediocre seventh place. The sentence had been clear: plank too worn.

They had warning from the FIA after the sprint race in China.

The problem had already emerged in the Abu Dhabi tests that preceded the start of the season: the red car was competitive if it could crawl on the asphalt, otherwise, even raised by a few, very few millimeters, it lost a lot of aerodynamic downforce and, therefore, performance. The SF-25 was designed to travel very low, but the values that gave large numbers in the wind tunnel did not translate to the track. The problem exploded at the end of March, reappeared in the Spanish GP, at the beginning of June, again with Hamilton: in order not to incur a second disqualification, they had inflated his tires like "balloons". With greater pressure, the car rises which, however, becomes undrivable. And punctually Lewis' protests exploded.

The tire pressure trick had already been used in Spain on Hamilton's car.


I think some of the difference in performance that we are seeing being Lewis and Charles is coming from different setups which are impacting the ride heights of the cars. As I understand, Hamilton likes a "softer" setup which means the ground clearance has to be higher to account for the plank wear. The gaps in some races make more sense if 1 car just isn't producing as much downforce because of the sensitivity of this car's downforce to ride height, and the sensitivity of ride height to the mechanical setup of the car.

[dialtone]

Yeah this is becoming embarrassing for such a team of engineers…

It’s total nonsense. It’s not plank wear.

[yooogurt]

It’s not plank wear.

what is it then?

[dans79]

Gentlemen, what are you trying to achieve, exactly?

Trolls are going to troll, and hence why this forum is the way it is!

[dialtone]

It’s not plank wear.

what is it then?

I shared already before, you won't like it because it's actually the chassis that broke, but it's still the case.



And my post earlier:
https://www.f1technical.net/forum/viewt ... 2#p1299822

Fundamentally they couldn't change chassis to fit the new suspension, the new suspension has more vertical load that the chassis wasn't designed to sustain, the high kerbs in hungary, like T6-7, stress the suspension quite a lot, and thus stress the chassis in this new more vertical way, up to the point where the junction point to the chassis broke.

The math and the data checks out for this explanation, it's also what the team said which for most here is irrelevant but Vasseur has never lied to the press despite what people say.

[CjC]

https://it.motorsport.com/f1/news/f1-fe ... /10748680/

Interesting details in this article.

No one remembers Lewis Hamilton's pole position in the sprint race in China and then the subsequent victory of the seven-time world champion in the Shanghai race. It seemed like the beginning of a fairy tale after 100 km dominated without anyone keeping up with the Englishman, McLaren understood. Then came an "alarm" from the FIA: the technical stewards had detected an abnormal wear of the skate and had advised the Scuderia to get in place. A warning that was not sufficiently heeded, given that Lewis was removed from the standings in the Chinese GP after a mediocre seventh place. The sentence had been clear: plank too worn.

They had warning from the FIA after the sprint race in China.

The problem had already emerged in the Abu Dhabi tests that preceded the start of the season: the red car was competitive if it could crawl on the asphalt, otherwise, even raised by a few, very few millimeters, it lost a lot of aerodynamic downforce and, therefore, performance. The SF-25 was designed to travel very low, but the values that gave large numbers in the wind tunnel did not translate to the track. The problem exploded at the end of March, reappeared in the Spanish GP, at the beginning of June, again with Hamilton: in order not to incur a second disqualification, they had inflated his tires like "balloons". With greater pressure, the car rises which, however, becomes undrivable. And punctually Lewis' protests exploded.

The tire pressure trick had already been used in Spain on Hamilton's car.


I think some of the difference in performance that we are seeing being Lewis and Charles is coming from different setups which are impacting the ride heights of the cars. As I understand, Hamilton likes a "softer" setup which means the ground clearance has to be higher to account for the plank wear. The gaps in some races make more sense if 1 car just isn't producing as much downforce because of the sensitivity of this car's downforce to ride height, and the sensitivity of ride height to the mechanical setup of the car.

Thanks for this.
I said at the time of Lewis’ success and failure in China that the car was more than likely set up for the sprint in a way which would be illegal for a full length race hence his disqualification. Of course many contributors to this thread belligerently countered my opinion.

I also recall reminding them of the pitfalls Mclaren made in 2013 when they introduced their pull rod front suspension and how they inadvertently lowered the car which increased performance (raising fans expectations) but couldn’t be ran that way in the races due to legality troubles - I was again lambasted for my ‘sentimental’ opinion.

More fool them I say.

[CjC]

It’s not plank wear.

what is it then?

I shared already before, you won't like it because it's actually the chassis that broke, but it's still the case.



And my post earlier:
https://www.f1technical.net/forum/viewt ... 2#p1299822

Fundamentally they couldn't change chassis to fit the new suspension, the new suspension has more vertical load that the chassis wasn't designed to sustain, the high kerbs in hungary, like T6-7, stress the suspension quite a lot, and thus stress the chassis in this new more vertical way, up to the point where the junction point to the chassis broke.

The math and the data checks out for this explanation, it's also what the team said which for most here is irrelevant but Vasseur has never lied to the press despite what people say.

So if this is true- what’s next?
Revert back to the old suspension or spend
more resources on a 2025 car?

[CjC]

Talking of failed mid-season rear suspension upgrades….

I know it’s the wrong team in the wrong thread but….

Mercs new rear suspension may ‘end up in the bin’
https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/why- ... -in-a-bin/

[AR3-GP]

The note about Ferrari having been warned after the sprint race in China was new and it could explain a bit of the confusion in the decision documents after the Chinese GP. Hamilton's car was not listed as part of the skid wear checks in the official scrutineering documents.


https://www.fia.com/documents/champions ... and%20Prix

Was this a typo? Or did they just use discretion to look at Hamilton's car anyway because of what they saw after the sprint. You could even wonder if Hamilton's skid had worn too much already during the sprint, but they weren't going to cause a *****storm by disqualifying Hamilton from the sprint given the significance of his first victory for Ferrari. That would have been a PR disaster. Speculative, of course.

[dialtone]

So if this is true- what’s next?
Revert back to the old suspension or spend
more resources on a 2025 car?

They anyway need a new chassis for LEC.

You can probably do a few things here after determining what happened exactly in the team. Probably need to analyze the stress fracture and how off they are.

Options available to them:
* Reduce the usable life of a chassis to fewer races and make a few more for the remainder of the season. Limit the stress that goes into it should limit future accidents of the kind.
* Tell the drivers to limit the aggressiveness on high kerbs. LEC gained a ton in Q3 by going over that T6-7 kerb, it was a surprise for him due to the entry to T6 being wider thanks to the wind, ended up being lucky and nailing the T7 exit. He then probably went more aggressive on those kerbs for the rest of the weekend since the gain was so significant.
* Reinforce the area around the suspension linkages, could be very easy if the stress fracture or the load differential is small. If it was the titanium linkage that fractured/bent they might just be good with a slightly thicker one for example, very cheap.
* Redesign the chassis just to accomodate the new suspension direction, IMHO this is also not very expensive, all things considered, overall but it's a bit time consuming due to production lead time, and of course this option you probably really don't want.
* Change setup parameters of the car so that the vertical load is compensated by perhaps a slightly softer suspension for example, and that setup will also need to be compensated somewhere else.

Most of these options are manageable, there are probably other options that only come up when you know exactly what happened.

I think Ferrari will want to spend some cycles into fixing this given the fan reaction to this issue.

[yooogurt]

Fundamentally they couldn't change chassis to fit the new suspension, the new suspension has more vertical load that the chassis wasn't designed to sustain, the high kerbs in hungary, like T6-7, stress the suspension quite a lot, and thus stress the chassis in this new more vertical way, up to the point where the junction point to the chassis broke.

The math and the data checks out for this explanation, it's also what the team said which for most here is irrelevant but Vasseur has never lied to the press despite what people say.

In this case Charles could not have known about the problems in advance, but he said that the podium would be lost before the disaster, did he mean the next season and that he would be involved in the design of the chassis? Of course not, here we are talking about what setup could have been done differently. In the Spa the suspension withstood everything and the podium was obtained without problems. And the pace wasn't much worse than McLaren's on slicks.

[dialtone]

Fundamentally they couldn't change chassis to fit the new suspension, the new suspension has more vertical load that the chassis wasn't designed to sustain, the high kerbs in hungary, like T6-7, stress the suspension quite a lot, and thus stress the chassis in this new more vertical way, up to the point where the junction point to the chassis broke.

The math and the data checks out for this explanation, it's also what the team said which for most here is irrelevant but Vasseur has never lied to the press despite what people say.

In this case Charles could not have known about the problems in advance, but he said that the podium would be lost before the disaster, did he mean the next season and that he would be involved in the design of the chassis? Of course not, here we are talking about what setup could have been done differently. In the Spa the suspension withstood everything and the podium was obtained without problems. And the pace wasn't much worse than McLaren's on slicks.

No, he said that the "podium would be a miracle" and that was obvious given that his pace was sometimes over 2s slower than Russell, he said that after he got easily passed by PIA and saw him disappear quickly in front, it was a perfectly reasonable take even not knowing anything, even viewers knew that was the case.

SPA suspension is the same as the Hungary suspension. Please folks, get your facts straight.

[AR3-GP]

In this case Charles could not have known about the problems in advance, but he said that the podium would be lost before the disaster, did he mean the next season and that he would be involved in the design of the chassis? Of course not, here we are talking about what setup could have been done differently. In the Spa the suspension withstood everything and the podium was obtained without problems. And the pace wasn't much worse than McLaren's on slicks.

The cars are lifted in Spa because of the compression in Eau Rouge.