Ferrari has a serious duty in the next round of the 2024 Formula 1 championship, the Hungarian Grand Prix, namely to erase the poor performances displayed since the Canadian Grand Prix. It certainly won’t be easy, as finding the lost working point of the car is a serious matter. To do this, the Prancing Horse’s technicians have once again put in an extra effort. We are talking about small updates that could refine the latest aerodynamic update package of the Italian car. Upgrades that on paper were expected to be “phenomenal,” providing a higher level of downforce, but then on the track failed to replicate the results seen in the simulator.
The Maranello team chooses, as predicted, the high downforce version of the rear wing to load the rear axle and provide grip in the fast sections of the middle sector in Budapest. This move will also help traction. The specification is the same as that used on the streets of Monte Carlo in Monaco last May, with which Ferrari managed to achieve a good balance of the car. For this reason, it is believed that with this type of configuration the SF-24 single-seater can find more competitiveness compared to other races. Additionally, sensitivity to aerodynamic efficiency drops drastically on a circuit like the Hungarian one.
Teams will have to tackle only one straight with a lesser impact on lap time. As a result, the rear is loaded more, and the aero-mechanical compromise is easier to read. This is one of the main problems of the SF-24, a car currently having a very small operating window in terms of setup. Some modifications to the floor are also expected to seek greater stability in the downforce generated by this element. Ferrari therefore faces a very intense Friday program to validate the improvements made to the car in the past two weeks.
Ferrari’s rear wing is compared to Red Bull’s. In their case too, it is the Monaco version, a high downforce version of the RB20 that features a main plane with a very pronounced leading edge, aiming to create a large pressure difference between the underside and top of the wing itself. Some minor rear issues have not spared Red Bull either, which on several occasions has shown oversteer at the apex of medium-speed corners. Therefore, they will need to fix the handling on bumps that are present in several areas of this track.
The reasons for Red Bull’s problems are well-known. We refer to the use of very stiff suspension setups, to allow the RB20’s floor to work in ideal conditions for generating as much vertical thrust as designed. The car leading the Constructors’ Championship standings manages to generate a lot of mechanical grip, but the road surface irregularities challenge the car’s stability in the medium-slow corners. By reducing stiffness, however, the blue racing cars lose useful downforce, possibly also due to excessive sensitivity of the floor to height variations.
McLaren also chooses to use the Monaco package with a highly loaded wing. They will lose some performance in terms of end of straight speed, but in this way, they have the goal of increasing rear downforce to benefit the grip produced by the rear tires. The main weakness remains the slow-speed cornering. At the Red Bull Ring in Austria, a revised front wing already arrived, aiming to improve the management of airflow at low speeds. A more loaded wing will certainly help the acceleration phase, especially when the car starts to pick up speed and the downforce becomes significant.
Looking also at Mercedes, the team led by Toto Wolff brings the Monaco-specific high downforce setup. In their case, the main plane has an increase in chord in the central area. In this zone, the incoming flows have a different inclination and are less clean due to the engine cover bodywork. They proceed by increasing the incidence in the central area to achieve as homogeneous vertical thrust as possible across the width of the wing. Much attention is paid to the fast sections of the second sector, where understeer appears on entry and oversteer in the middle of the corner. The higher rear downforce is useful in cornering, less so on entry, given that the car’s overall balance is quite rearward on this circuit.
Source: FUnoanalisitecnica
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