The 2024 Ferrari single-seater will be the seventieth F1 car from Maranello: project code 676. Frederic Vasseur closely monitors the design of what will be “his” first car since the SF-23 was still a product of Mattia Binotto’s management. The French team principal holds timely weekly meetings with Enrico Cardile, head of chassis and the future technical director, and Enrico Gualtieri, head of engines, to understand in detail the guidelines for conceiving a car that must reinvigorate the Scuderia’s fortunes.
The first certain data is that the Ferrari 676 will be designed from a blank slate. Diego Tondi, chief aerodynamicist, and Fabio Montecchi, the technician who took over the role of Head of Vehicle Concept left vacant by David Sanchez, the Frenchman who left the Scuderia to accept Andrea Stella’s offer to join McLaren from the beginning of next year, are the two engineers tasked with designing the red car of redemption. A great responsibility that will be shared with the figures of the Ferrari Racing Division, eager to demonstrate that even in Maranello, a competitive single-seater can be conceived.
The regulations for next year will not change, so there will be no risk of interpreting the rules more restrictively, as has often happened in Maranello’s history. On the contrary, the trend will be towards finding some convergence towards the most efficient solutions. The new Ferrari will abandon the concept of sculpted side pods that characterized the ground effect single-seaters of the last generation, to convert to ideas closer to those developed by Adrian Newey on the infamous RB19, the Formula 1 car that has dominated the 2023 season from the first GP.
It is easy to predict that only a few bolts will be transferable from the SF-23 to the 2024 red car, because if Ferrari wants to have the ambition to challenge Max Verstappen’s dominance with Red Bull, they must revise not only the aerodynamic configuration, but more generally, the hardware of the car, touching the chassis to equip it with more extreme suspension and moving the lower intrusion cone so that it does not restrict the airflow under the radiator intake. Obviously, choices will have to be made that take into account spending limits, and these could be the biggest stumbling blocks in seeking a comeback after a much more difficult and disappointing season than expected.
Of course, Ferrari will not simply copy Red Bull with a banal exercise in copying; they will try to push some ideas beyond the RB19 itself, using their own expertise. It should not be surprising, then, to see the current SF-23 being evolved and developed until the United States Grand Prix in Austin because what they find in the wind tunnel during this phase will be valuable for next year as well.
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The 676 must be a courageous aerodynamic car but very solid mechanically, hosting the power unit 066/7. The turbocharged six-cylinder remains the same, but the engineers will try to improve the hybrid management during the winter: those who came from the Red Bull-Honda world brought a wealth of experience that should be useful in reducing the gap of the red car from Newey’s car with the DRS open.
Ferrari does not have the English genius and does not even have its loyal personnel who left Milton Keynes to embark on new projects (Dan Fallows in Aston Martin and Rob Marshall in McLaren), so it is hard to believe that the gap from Red Bull can be filled in a single winter. However, Aston Martin and Mercedes have shown this year that it is possible to make great leaps in quality with well-executed update packages.
Fred Vasseur has placed trust in internal resources: for now, the Scuderia maintains an Italian matrix that was born and raised in Maranello, awaiting the arrival of Loic Serra, head of development at Mercedes, next year. This does not mean, in the meantime, that new forces with new ideas have not arrived in Maranello: on average, ninety out of a thousand employees are in turnover each year, so a rotation of faces is guaranteed. The important thing is to choose the right ones…
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