“It’s no longer time to tell ourselves bulls***…” this is what Fred Vasseur confessed to have said “to his team” after one of the worst races in the first part of the 2023 Formula One season, which took place in Jeddah, regarding the unmet expectations of the SF-23 single-seater.
Decisive days for simulations
What has changed will be revealed by the team principal himself in the coming days. Meanwhile, December is a busy period, at least from the perspective of searching for the last tenth of theoretical performance, which is the most challenging to find. Simulations never stop; however, one thing is now clearer: with these cars, the track can reveal negative surprises. All teams make winter progress, and regulatory stability reduces theoretical gain margins a bit. Nevertheless, there is much to explore regarding the understanding of these cars. An understanding that generates the right ideas. It’s all relative to what Red Bull will show from February. Verstappen has won 19 out of 22 races, some easily, some even more, with the same rules and tires. The temptation to take a prolonged dominance for granted is high.
A clean break with the past
But Ferrari and Mercedes have room to recover in terms of car design. The changes were not feasible with the 2023 cars due to the wind tunnel time limit and cost cap. It is no secret that in these past months of chasing, Maranello and Brackley have had to face the facts and break with the past. It is crucial to rethink some parts of the chassis in favor of concepts taken from the RB19, although a certain percentage of old parts cannot simply be discarded. “Red Bull is not impossible to catch, at least we believe so. But after collecting so much data (on the track), we cannot make any mistakes in our choices anymore. We are confident that we can return to the fight,” Mercedes sources had informed.
The lesson from 2023
Ferrari started 2023 with too ambitious performance goals. The SF-23 was a two-faced car, and the drivers fought first with the car and then with the opponents, often ending up being betrayed. After a few weeks, an uncomfortable truth emerged: the car had no significant room for improvement; in other words, it was “limited.” The SF-23 was never consistent from turn to turn, limiting setup options and leaving the front axle inadequately protected. During that time, Fred Vasseur gave Enrico Cardile clear responsibility for technical choices and granted more visibility to the public. It is not a coincidence that the Tuscan engineer speaks more than in the past. “For us, it is perfectly clear what we got wrong. We know our weaknesses; now it’s about reviewing the characteristics of the car to achieve our goals,” he explained.
“Limits surpassed”
The Scuderia has slightly narrowed the gap to Red Bull during the season after understanding the reasons for the performance shortcomings, but it is not enough. “The 676 cannot be an evolution. It will be a different car; that’s for sure. The limits of this year’s Ferrari have been surpassed,” Enrico Cardile said at the Golden Helmets ceremony. What does the technical director refer to? In 2022, the F1-75 was a source of good ideas. The famous “sidepods” had an important function in protecting the rear from turbulence. The big problem was struggling with instability and ground heights, which produced limitations in terms of efficiency in high-speed corners. The work on the SF-23 focused on finding more efficient downforce but in the wrong way, which did not solve the fundamental problem. The car had a significant predisposition to harmful bouncing despite having an ideally good aerodynamic map, as explained by Formula 1 expert Giuliano Duchessa for corriere.it.
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Chassis and rear end
Aerodynamicists have made progressive pitch changes with updates from Barcelona, Austria, and Japan. However, this could not solve the major limitations. In other words, as demonstrated by Haas, simply removing the famous sidepods was not enough to produce “low-cost” downforce. The 2024 model has a largely revised chassis and an overall rear end structure that will differently connect the flows exiting the diffuser. The areas of interest are therefore hidden under the bodywork and under the floor. Technicians do not want the new car to still have aerodynamic instability to offer more confidence to Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz. Upstream of the car, the design of the turning vanes will appear completely different; the undercut under the side pods will increase because the concept has already changed since Barcelona. However, one thing Ferrari will not do is design a copy of Red Bull. There will be their own innovations, some will be visible, others somehow “surprising.”
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