Ferrari SF23

[jambuka]

As far as new rear suspension goes - it seems to be the great Ferrari unicorn. We heard about new rear suspension coming for the F1-75 several times last season. First it was coming at Silverstone, then after the summer break. As far as I’m aware, the mythical suspension never came? Now we’re back to bringing more mythical rear suspension.

Honestly the amount of rumour and conjecture around Ferrari at the moment is so overwhelming it’s impossible to know which ways up. I’ll believe it when I see it.

Did they not start this season with new front and rear suspension ? Now again new rear suspension ?

[Xyz22]

As far as new rear suspension goes - it seems to be the great Ferrari unicorn. We heard about new rear suspension coming for the F1-75 several times last season. First it was coming at Silverstone, then after the summer break. As far as I’m aware, the mythical suspension never came? Now we’re back to bringing more mythical rear suspension.

Honestly the amount of rumour and conjecture around Ferrari at the moment is so overwhelming it’s impossible to know which ways up. I’ll believe it when I see it.

A rumour talking about a new suspension (especially the rear one) brought during the season is 99% bullshit.

[ing.]

As far as new rear suspension goes - it seems to be the great Ferrari unicorn. We heard about new rear suspension coming for the F1-75 several times last season. First it was coming at Silverstone, then after the summer break. As far as I’m aware, the mythical suspension never came? Now we’re back to bringing more mythical rear suspension.

Honestly the amount of rumour and conjecture around Ferrari at the moment is so overwhelming it’s impossible to know which ways up. I’ll believe it when I see it.

There was mention at the launch of SF-23 of the rear suspension being multi-link and it looks like the upper wishbone may in fact be 2 separate links joined at the outboard (upright) pick-up.

Potential mods at the rear could possibly be a change in the spring/damper geometry or the inboard pick-ups to affect anti-squat or anti-lift, so not necessarily very visible.

[ringo]

The elephant in the room is the floor.
They need to relook at it. The car just isnt generating enough load.
What could have got worse under the floor just for an increase in the front height?

[LM10]

The elephant in the room is the floor.
They need to relook at it. The car just isnt generating enough load.
What could have got worse under the floor just for an increase in the front height?

The fact that the SF-23, despite having the skinniest wings, was the fastest car in the T5-T7 section in Bahrain is already enough to debunk your theory.

[101FlyingDutchman]

The elephant in the room is the floor.
They need to relook at it. The car just isnt generating enough load.
What could have got worse under the floor just for an increase in the front height?

The fact that the SF-23, despite having the skinniest wings, was the fastest car in the T5-T7 section in Bahrain is already enough to debunk your theory.

Totally agree. Really ill thought through and not at all cemented in the real world

[ringo]

The elephant in the room is the floor.
They need to relook at it. The car just isnt generating enough load.
What could have got worse under the floor just for an increase in the front height?

The fact that the SF-23, despite having the skinniest wings, was the fastest car in the T5-T7 section in Bahrain is already enough to debunk your theory.

Okay awaiting your flipflop a month from now to switch your position when ferrari reveals they were not able to generate the load consistently from the floor.
Going fast through a few corners dont say much overall. The floor finding a little sweet spot 10% of the time when the stars and planets allign isnt indicative of a robust design of a floor. That's no different than Mercedes running well at a few races last year.

[Vanja #66]

It's best to just stop reading all of the speculation from the various media outlets. I have seen nothing consistent or coherent. Mostly just wild speculation. It is a uniquely Ferrari problem to have the media invent the problems and the solutions before Ferrari themselves...Let's wait for Chrono GP to invent the new rear suspension for Ferrari

Everything is mostly revolving around floor performance, that was clearly lacking in Jeddah, even in Q, so it was clear the car was raised compared to Bahrain. That alone was a compromise, for whatever reason. Performance on Hards was very bad, Mediums are a bit of an unknown (sadly, Sainz wasn't representative because of both himself and Stroll) and we can conclude without doubt that only the Softs worked well for Charles.

So if Hards were stiffer and harder to warm up than expected and Ferrari ended up with an even higher car than expected, that could influence the overall performance a lot. Let's not forget, small ride height increase (up from the optimal point) has a very big influence on floor downforce - it can literally be down to 5mm (as Andi wrote about what happened to F2005)...



This is what I meant when I wrote about perfect attention to stable ride height on RB19 and perfected interaction between various performance drivers.

[ringo]

It musr be noted that with 18 inch rims we dont have the same kind of ride height variation as with 13 inch wheels.
The 18 inch tyres also have very stiff sidewalls.
Rideheight change with warm up may in fact be miniscule.
Is there tyre temperature and pressure data for the 18 inch wheels from 2022?

[Vanja #66]

Stiffer tyres don't change the fact these floors are much more sensitive to ride height changes then any in the last 40 years. It doesn't change the fact Ferrari didn't do a good job with their 2023 suspension and its compatibility with aerodynamic behaviour...

And the not-good-enough job on suspension doesn't change the fact the car is capable of producing suficient downforce, but not yet able to transmit the downforce to tyre contact patches in the best way possible.

[aleks_ader]

Exactly. Now just begs the question if this is feasible in real life. Arguably i heard Newey worked on rear suspension mainly on RB18. So RB "secret" was hiding in plain sight. Newey arguably pointed design team toward ground effect efficiency at different ride heights. So he grabbed bull by horns (pun not intended ) at problem where engineers have biggest influence. Now Ferrari team come full circle as Newey foresaw in pre 2022. Kinda poetic.

[ringo]

Stiffer tyres don't change the fact these floors are much more sensitive to ride height changes then any in the last 40 years. It doesn't change the fact Ferrari didn't do a good job with their 2023 suspension and its compatibility with aerodynamic behaviour...

And the not-good-enough job on suspension doesn't change the fact the car is capable of producing suficient downforce, but not yet able to transmit the downforce to tyre contact patches in the best way possible.

Why skirt around the fact the floor is just not versatile?
The 40 year comment is not relatable. The ride sensitivity will also include fuel burn and basic downforce increase with speed. Those two factors are more drastic than tyre diameter. So again maybe the floor is just not good enough.

It cannot be that the floor is well designed if half a millimeter throws it off. Those sidewalls wont move 2mm between outlap and two sectors purely from temperature increase.

The teams do expect the floor to be moving across a wide range of heights, especially with fuel load burning off.
It's my hunch, the suspension is not wholly to blame; if at all.

I do not know much about it to say it's a big problem or not, but maybe they need to redesign the floor more than the suspension.

Now as for the Newey comment. Yes better suspension can maximize the floor staying stable at a sweet spot range to produce more load. This is a different argument for overheating tyres. Reason being the car seems to work well when pushed for 1 lap on low fuel. So the suspension seems to be fine in this sense.
When the car has to be fueled for the race, we start to see the narrow window the floor works in as fuel load changes.
The two, suspension and floor are related indeed, but the onus is on the floor.

[AR3-GP]

You could see this as either a suspension problem or an aero problem. The solution is either to build a better suspension system, to allow the car to maintain the perfect ground clearance, or to develop a less sensitive aero map such that changes in ride height don't dramatically alter the load level.

What is it that Ferrari think Red Bull have? A great suspension system or a very tolerant aero map?

[organic]

You could see this as either a suspension problem or an aero problem. The solution is either to build a better suspension system, to allow the car to maintain the perfect ground clearance, or to develop a less sensitive aero map such that changes in ride height don't dramatically alter the load level.

What is it that Ferrari think Red Bull have? A great suspension system or a very tolerant aero map?

RB spent the first half of last system building a floor that worked well across ride heights / wasn't too sensitive. Maybe this is the key first and foremost. Sacrifice some performance chasing to build a stable platform and then bolt on downforce when you have it under control.

[Vanja #66]

Why skirt around the fact the floor is just not versatile?
The 40 year comment is not relatable. The ride sensitivity will also include fuel burn and basic downforce increase with speed. Those two factors are more drastic than tyre diameter.

Are you saying other floors are versatile - as in 10mm of ride height doesn't cost a lot of downforce? What mechanism would allow for that? Both a wing and a diffuser in ground effect (and these floors are a combination of both) have an optimal point and small ride height variations cost decent downforce.

RB18 was scraping the ground all the time after the first few races and was still legal even after TD39. Ice skates helped with bouncing, but they can't help with plank wear. Suspension can.

RB spent the first half of last system building a floor that worked well across ride heights / wasn't too sensitive.

I would rather say they had and still have a car that is less sensitive to bumps with regards to bouncing, which allows them to ride lower when other teams need to go higher. They always ran very low (in medium/high speed corners), RB18 had a rake that was visible only until about 100-120kmh I believe. Whether this low sensitivity is more down to floor or suspension or about equally to both, I can't tell.