Ferrari F1-75 design was constant trade-off between weight and aero performance. Weight and aero often clashed for Ferrari with F1-75.

Working on the Scuderia Ferrari challenger for the 2022 Formula 1 season represented a constant clash between weight and aero performance, according to the Maranello team’s head of chassis project engineering Fabio Montecchi, with just a few days until the F1-75 will hit the track for the first pre-season testing session at the Circuit de Catalunya.

Given the new rules and technical regulation for 2022, all teams have been focusing on identifying and working on the ideal starting point with their new cars. Scuderia Ferrari proved to be one of the teams to take an aggressive approach with theri concepts, as the F1-75 certainly did tick the box for innovation, but it was not a smooth process.

As confirmed by Ferrari’s chassis boss Fabio Montecchi, the Maranello team had to deal with the challenge of keeping their focus on performance as the weight of the F1-75 and aero performance clashed.

“The biggest difficulty we encountered was harmonising the objectives we had set ourselves” – Fabio Montecchi explained, in a recent interview with the Ferrari official website – “These objectives often conflicted with each other, so it was necessary to find the best compromise to optimise overall performance. Often the goal of car weight and aerodynamic performance have come into conflict. In those moments it’s important not to lose sight of how well the car performs.” – he added.

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A common idea across the grid is that the new cars will continue to evolve right up until the first race of the 2022 championship. At the same time, this process should continue at a fast pace throughout the record 23-race calendar scheduled for this season.

And Fabio Montecchi explained that such is the magnitude of the regulation changes, they are indeed still very much in the exploratory stage: “This regulation is so different from the past that it has projected us into unknown territory that is still to be explored. Let me give you an example: the bottom of the car will no longer be flat, but will be three-dimensional. This will be the first time since 1982. Even just this small content brings with it many implications for the car’s set-up and the design of the suspension.” – he concluded.