Ferrari suffers from degradation of the front tires, by now it is a clearly known issue. The F1-75 is competitive on a flying lap, but not in race pace. The issue first affected the Maranello team at the Hungarian GP and after six races there has not yet been any significant improvement, preventing Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz from fighting for race wins in this second part of the 2022 Formula 1 season, a victory that the Scuderia has been waiting for since the beginning of July in Austria, when Charles Leclerc won at the Red Bull Ring.
The F1-75 at the beginning of the season stood out as the car that was more “gentle” on the tires, while Red Bull RB18, McLaren MCL36 and even Mercedes W13 suffered from the management of the temperatures in the front corners.
How come? Everything, of course, results from the rule changes: Formula 1 decided to change the 13-inch tires to make way for the 18-inch Pirellis. So larger rims and more space inside the wheel which has allowed teams to use carbon discs with a larger diameter capable of extracting more heat.
Not only that, but the FIA regulations have forbidden to expel the air from the external side of the wheel because a rim cover has been adopted to prevent aerodynamic flows useful for diverting the incoming air from the front wing, so much so that even the carbon disks could no longer have blowouts, but had to be closed.
And to all this we add that in order to bring the tires to the right temperature window until last year it was necessary to exploit the heat from the brake system, which was radiated to the rim and, therefore, to the tires.
This season, however, the work of the technicians was aimed at removing heat from the corner precisely to avoid overheating.
An opposite direction compared to the recent past, also because the hot air must be vented from the same side of the cooling vents. A complication that made the task more difficult, but not impossible to solve.
Red Bull and McLaren, followed by Mercedes and other teams, tried to “dress” the front disc with a cover in heat-resistant insulating material which, at least at the beginning, had created problems in with brakes overheating, so much so that at the beginning of the championship we saw covers of different designs and materials.
Brake discs made of titanium appeared on the MCL36 which were then replaced by a carbon solution. And Red Bull, struggling with similar problems, then came found the solution of using a special paint to facilitate cooling.
The attempt, therefore, was to isolate the heat of the brakes, to exploit the space between the two brake ducts (the external and the internal one) and to channel a flow of cold air used for aerodynamic functions, in an attempt to reproduce in a more limited manner the benefits that engineers had until last year.
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Let’s be clear the advantages are minimal compared to the past, but when the pole positions are won only by a few thousandths everything counts, so the attention remains very high, especially since “controlling” the temperature of the front tires can be decisive for success.
Ferrari has followed a path of its own development with the aim of achieving the same result: the cover on the disc in the TV shots and in the photographs is not seen, simply because this is part of the brake ducts, with a drawing that is specific for the Maranello team. In the last few races we have often heard in free practice about problems with the… brakes on the F1-75, in particular on Charles Leclerc’s car. In reality, the Brembo system has nothing to do with it, because braking is one of the characteristics that enhance the Monegasque’s world-class driving style.
Taking into consideration the budget cap rules (which Ferrari scrupulously respected) three or four different solutions were studied for the air passages in the baskets to favor the “cooling” of the corner rather than the “heating”, obviously aimed at better managing the tyre and then the issue was no longer approached during the year.
Probably the development of the F1-75 would have required further interventions in this delicate area that the cost constraint has evidently no longer granted. It is easy to imagine that on the 2023 Ferrari F1 car we will see important changes, precisely to avoid the problems that are limiting Ferrari’s potential in the finale part of the current season.
The feeling, therefore, is that the technicians have to work with a “short cover” looking for the best possible mix of intakes and air passages that mitigate tire overheating after a few laps. If this were the case, it is not that in Maranello they did not identify the problem and the possible solution, but more incredibly, the Ferrari Racing Department must deal with the unfortunate effects of the budget cap.
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