The Ferrari SF-24 car was created with an excellent foundation, but it is clear that at this moment it is still not enough to be able to challenge Max Verstappen and Red Bull, mostly due to the massive deficit that Ferrari had when starting to work on the 2024 Formula 1 project. However, its is also true that significant progress has been made compared to the challenging SF-23 car. In the first race of the season, Carlos Sainz confirmed a four-tenths recovery from Red Bull compared to the gap that we saw 12 months ago, which can be considered a reliable figure given the fact that the Dutch champion managed the result in both editions. This gap was also evident at the Jeddah city circuit in Saudi Arabia with Charles Leclerc’s podium finish behind the Red Bull duo of Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez.
The Maranello team has therefore started the 2024 Formula 1 championship as the second force on track, and the night races in Sakhir and Jeddah have amply confirmed this raking. The Italian side has shown both its strengths and areas for improvement. In the opening race, Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari Formula 1 car suffered more than 100 degrees split in temperature between his front right and left brakes, which triggered lock-ups, at times costing about six-tenths per lap of race pace for the Monegasque driver. In the second race in Saudi Arabia, there might have been untapped potential in the car. It feels like a missed opportunity to challenge Sergio Perez – a target deemed fairly vulnerable by the Maranello team’s technicians.
The foundation to work on is much better than in 2023: Ferrari will now bring minor updates for the Suzuka weekend, then an updated aerodynamic package in Imola.
Describing Maranello’s current car as a “1.0” version is no understatement. From the first kilometers driven at the home race track in Fiorano, the car born from project 676 provided excellent feedback to the drivers, confirming the great work done by the Ferrari engineers to overturn the initially misguided concepts of the 2023 car post-Barcelona. The conventional shapes of the car didn’t impress during the official presentation, but the wind tunnel results were positive from the first development tests of the project. The foundation is therefore excellent and this aspect was clearly needed to bring to the track a car to work on without groping in the dark. Unfortunately, as expected, Red Bull has raised the bar even further by transforming the concept, other competitors have improved but not enough, but at least Ferrari has responded adequately.
At the end of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix weekend, Ferrari team principal confirmed that the Italian side already has new parts in the wind tunnel. Indeed, there’s already an evolutionary version of the SF-24 car in the tunnel, pushing the concepts present in the 1.0 version even further. Some minor upgrades are expected for April, while the new aerodynamic package will arrive in May towards Imola, barring significant changes that could alter the plan. This new package includes not only tweaks to the sidepods but also much of the body and a new floor. A series of evolutionary steps and interventions aimed at pushing the good base obtained in winter even further.
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The primary goal of this SF-24 has been largely achieved, finally providing a clear path to extract even more downforce. Keeping the “strong” points of the old car and finding balance and stable load at high speeds has been the main focus of the Maranello team’s efforts.
The cooling system has not presented problems ever since the car hit the track for the pre-season testing session and therefore the radiator inlets will be narrower, following the development path largely adopted by Red Bull last year.
The update introduced by Red Bull on its RB19 single-seater in the 2023 Hungarian Grand Prix weekend, with increasingly narrow radiator inlets in favor of the undercut is the direction many have taken this year. For instance, Aston Martin is one of the teams that have adopted much of the RB19’s philosophy regarding cooling inlets. Sources from the Italian media clearly indicate that Scuderia Ferrari will follow the development path heading in that direction. A wider breach, aggressive inlets, are among the first developments that will be seen on the SF-24 this year. Technically, this very early 2024 Formula 1 season has confirmed to engineers that there have been no issues in cooling management despite more aggressive solutions in terms of the airbox design, especially when compared to Haas and Stake F1 Sauber. In the wind tunnel, it is therefore possible to push on performance without being hindered by the cooling of the Power Unit 066, which was a problem with last year’s car.
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