The interesting front wing changes made by Scuderia Ferrari with its SF-23 car clearly attracted a lot of attention from fans and the media, but the Maranello team pointed out that the suspension has been also revised for both aerodynamic benefits and to provide a greater range of setting adjustments on race weekends and that this should be seen as the biggest change as compared to the F1-75 challenger which won four races in 2022.
The SF-23 car was presented to the world earlier today at the Fiorano circuit, with Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz completing a few runs in front of the Tifosi:
“The 2023 car is an evolution of the one we raced last year,” explained head of chassis area Enrico Cardile in a video posted by the Maranello team on its social media accounts – “But in reality, it has all been completely redesigned. On the aerodynamic side, our aim was twofold – to increase vertical downforce and to make up for what was lost due to the new era regulations, and then to achieve the balance characteristics we had set ourselves. The suspension has also been completely redesigned, on the one hand to help the aerodynamicists get the results they were looking for, and on the other to increase the range of adjustments possible on the car at the track.” – he explained.
When asked to provide more details on the major differences compared to the F1-75 single-seater, the Ferrari head of chassis area added:
“The most obvious changes to the car are definitely in the area of the front suspension where we have moved from a configuration with a high trackrod to one with a low trackrod, driven by the demands of the aerodynamics. The front wing is also different, as is the construction of the nose, as the primary element is no longer attached to the nose instead it is floating. The bodywork is more a continuation of what was done last year, but it’s more extreme.” – Enrico Cardile continued.
Just like its rivals, Scuderia Ferrari had to evaluate the impact of the the 15mm change to the floor height which is introduced in the regulation for the next Formula 1 championship:
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“The new era rules introduced by the FIA to reduce the risk of porpoising on track have led to a net loss of aerodynamic performance. Actually quite a substantial loss. In terms of development, our work was not much different to that of previous years. We simply had to adapt the car’s geometry to suit the new flow shapes that are generated because of the new regulations.” – the Ferrari head of chassis area pointed out.
Enrico Cardile also made some interesting comments on the influence of the budget cap limitations, explaining that far more car parts from the F1-75 were used to design the new challenger as compared to the previous years, when were not force to deal with the financial limitations.
That was not possible 2021 to 2022 taking into consideration the big rule changes, as teams therefore had to redesign a lot of the car parts.
“The budget cap has had an undoubted effect on performance,” he noted. “Therefore, when it came to designing this year’s car, we had to take it into consideration. The way we went about it was to decide which areas of the car had little or no added value to the performance of the car, and then try and keep these areas of the car similar to those of the previous one. In numerical terms, it means the number of parts carried over in this year’s car is double the figure of that of a car built to the previous regulations, without the presence of a budget cap.” – Enrico Cardile concluded.
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