With just one day before the start of the winter pre-season testing session at the Bahrain International Circuit, the enthusiasm is growing for the official start of the 2023 Formula One championship. Unlike other teams who have hidden their most interesting solutions, Scuderia Ferrari took to the track right from the first meters of the demo day in Fiorano with the bypass duct that aroused so much interest at the presentation of the SF-23 last week.
The Maranello team has introduced an interesting duct that allows its to move the flow from the lower part of the sidepods to the upper area of the side, where a periscope air vent expels the cool air which accelerates the hot air that comes out of the gills, favoring cooling of the 066/7 power unit and improved aerodynamic efficiency.
The revisited S-duct that can be seen on the sides of the SF-23 car: while previously this concept had only been observed between the nose and the front of the chassis, it was obviously shown by Ferrari to the FIA technical department who did not object to allowing the solution to be mounted on the car from its debut on February 14th.
The solution, therefore, is perfectly legal for the staff of Nikolas Tombazis, even if all the single-seaters are subjected to the usual checks before the start of each season and the International Federation itself does not want to make specific comments on the individual cars before the opening race scheduled for the first weekend of March.
The colleagues from Formu1a.uno wrote that the first request for regulatory clarification of the SF-23 bypass duct was received by the FIA, even though the Maranello team has not received any complaints on the matter at the moment.
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Requests for clarification should come as no surprise: a team has the full right to ask the technical stewards if a solution can be considered legal even after a different interpretation of the rules, analyzing the idea with a different eye from the one with which it was conceived and presented to the FIA.
The issue is on the table, but the Maranello staff are looking at the pre-season testing session in Bahrain with confidence and don’t seem to fear surprises regarding a solution that has already sparked strong debate among Formula 1 fans.
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