The 2021 Formula One World Championship has just ended: a very long season, which concluded in mid-December, saw Red Bull and Mercedes fighting until the very end.
Scuderia Ferrari took third place with less anxiety than Mattia Binotto’s men expected, especially after the middle part of the season and the Mclaren one-two finish in teh Italian Grand Prix at Monza.
Ferrari has been working on Project 674 for two years
The 2022 cars will have an extremely different aerodynamic concept than the current ones. They will be cars rather unbalanced at the rear and therefore more limited at the front. In short, there is an ‘intrinsic’ understeer in the new concept of cars that will tend to change the driving style on the part of the drivers.
Also in terms of setup there will be something different than in recent years with more neutral setups than in 2021 and less ‘worried’ about protecting the rear.
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Ferrari 2022 was born with cautious but decisive optimism, mainly for two factors. Having consciously sacrificed two years, hence the very little development work, towards 2020, of the SF90 precisely to focus on the new cars that should have initially debuted in 2021 (then Covid postponed the debut to 2022), and on the SF21. In addition to having solved the age-old problem of data correlation in an important way, which was a fundamental issue for having tools available to transform the ideas of the technical office into something truly productive on the car. A problem that has been worked on a lot in the last 18 months, with important results.
A clear example of what must not be repeated are the floors delivered by the SF1000, the SF90 and (in part) also the SF71H. All macro components born from a sort of technical misunderstanding.
To manage the flows in an optimal manner, Ferrari had to penalize the rear tires (overheating issues) and at times the aerodynamic efficiency of the car, using wings with greater aerodynamic resistance. A problem solved on the rear of the SF21.
After the homologation of the chassis, the ‘latest’ aerodynamic resources have long been concentrated on the rear. We know that with the budget cap there is no possibility of infinite development on multiple areas, it is essential to decide the area of greatest opportunities.
The suction cup floor will have an inlet air flow greater than the current cars, this flow must be appropriately slowed down, but above all it must be disposed of through the diffuser avoiding stalling as the speed and load vary. In this sense, the regulation might leave some opportunities in that macro area of the new car, so much so that in Maranello they are testing an “innovative diffuser” in the gallery, a rather different solution from that seen on the Silverstone Fia model car.
In Maranello they are convinced that it will be very important to have maximum rear and traction stability in order to increase the front load without needing a rear wing that generates an exaggerated drag to balance it in slow sections.
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