F1, SF-23: Ferrari changed cooling concept to help with engine reliability

F1, SF-23: Ferrari changed cooling concept to help with engine reliability. Ferrari changed cooling concept.

The wait is almost over and we are very close to being able to see the first laps of the Ferrari SF-23 car at the Sakhir track during the winter pre-season testing session which is scheduled to take place between 23 and 25 February in Bahrain (click here to follow the live action from Day 1).

As expected, things have already started to come alive in Bahrain. A few days ago the first boxes of material that the teams sent from their headquarters to approach the first 14 days of the new championship already appeared on the circuit. Earlier today we also had confirmation of the Ferrari line-up for the pre-season testing session which starts tomorrow.

The three-day test in Sakhir will be the only opportunity for all teams to get a better understanding of their new cars and to check for confirmations regarding the work carried out during the winter on various key areas. Scuderia Ferrari focused especially on improving the reliability of the power unit, following the technical failures suffered after a few races in the previous Formula 1 season. These issues than forced the Maranello technicians to limit the power of the engine in the second part of the championship while trying to understand the cause of the technical problems and how to solve them for the new season.

According to German automobile magazine ‘Auto Motor und Sport’, Scuderia Ferrari changed the cooling concept for this year, in order to help with the engine reliability, and to be able to once again have the power advantage like at the beginning of the 2022 Formula 1 campaign. As a result, all radiators are now located near the floor. The Ferrari F1-75 car was also still considered heavy and had a lot of drag, which made it difficult for the Maranello engineers to setup well and thus resulted into a bad tyre management, combined with the reduced engine power, which led the F1-75 to losing a lot of ground to Red Bull and Mercedes in the second part of the previous year.