In other times there would have been a situation of collective hysteria in Maranello with the departure of the team principal: in the Ferrari Racing Division, on the other hand, the feeling is strangely calm, because work is proceeding according to the plans that had been defined in the time schedule for the design of project 675, the car for the 2023 season, which for now is called so based so the project code.
The presence of the outgoing Mattia Binotto in the Racing Department helps give the feeling of continuity to a team which, while waiting for the official announcement of Frederic Vasseur as new Ferrari team principal, is working with one goal: to reduce the performance gap that separated the F1-75 car from the world championship winning Red Bull RB18.
“In the team we are just trying to concentrate on our work on the simulator” – said Charles Leclerc at the FIA awards ceremony in Bologna on Friday – “to have the best possible racing car for next year. I am confident because we are doing a lot of simulator work. In recent months we have tried to understand what the weak points of the 2022 car were in order to improve the 2023 car. Mattia is also there at the moment, he is still at the office, working and trying to help the team prepare for next season” – the Monegasque driver pointed out.
There is more confidence inside Ferrari than outside and this too is an unusual aspect. The internal fibrillation will begin when Fred Vasseur will want to lay the foundations for his working group and, perhaps, will make some changes in the organizational chart. But everyone knows that revolutions are not needed, only adjustments.
The data emerging from the work in the wind tunnel is very positive: the 675 will represent an important leap in quality compared to the F1-75. The engineers directed by Enrico Cardile worked on the issues of the 2022 F1 car: two macro elements examined.
First: improve top speed with greater aerodynamic efficiency. The drag problem did not derive only from the difference in speed with the wing open, but also from the approach to aero-elasticity of certain components, not only in the wings, and from the ability to run with the ideal ride height to produce the maximum load from the floor.
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Second: tire management. Pirelli approved new front tires to reduce understeer, also meeting the needs of Ferrari and the driving style of Charles Leclerc in particular. In Maranello they have adapted the mathematical model of the new tires in the simulation systems and the results coming back from the virtual tests seem to be positive, because there should be a good correlation between the track and the simulator.
It must be acknowledged that the Scuderia has invested in the development of the tyres: if other teams have been reticent in giving Pirelli their availability to test during the season, the Maranello team has been particularly collaborative with Mario Isola’s technicians and this approach should give some useful result.
At first glance, the 675 will not be very different from the F1-75: the basic design will remain the same, so those who have foreseen big layout changes are very wrong: the car will be refined at the rear thanks to the new change that will allow a much more pronounced Coca-Cola area, but will not give up hollowed sidepods and a cooling system that has given excellent results.
The third aspect that gives confidence is that the changes made by Enrico Gualtieri’s power unit engineers for the reliability of the 066/7 have gone in the right direction and the life of the power unit has increased in bench tests, making it possible to recover that power which was seen at the start of the 2022 season and then disappeared to avoid further technical failures in the second part of the championship.
The internal confidence at Ferrari derives from the analysis of its own data, then it will be seen what Red Bull and Mercedes have managed to do.
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