The disappointing performance of the Ferrari SF-23, a single-seater that according to the expectations of the Maranello team should have fought for the world titles, convinced the Italian engineers to plan a corrective process with a deadline set for the home round, the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, which is set to be held at the Imola circuit.
With regard to the purely technical aspects, there is a multiplicity of updates in terms of improvements aimed at making the race pace more consistent, the clear main weakness of the SF-23 car in the start of the 2023 Formula One season.
Achilles heel of the red, more consistent.
The issue of the Ferrari 675 technical project could be made even worse in the next round of the championship, the Australian Grand Prix, in the atypical street circuit of Melbourne. A different type of layout compared to the previous rounds and, due to this geometry, a further testing ground for the Ferrari single-seater. Exactly one year ago in the splendid setting of Albert Park, Charles Leclerc and the F1-75 showed such overwhelming superiority as to suggest the Italian side would be able to challenge for the world titles. Sadly that was not the case.
Returning to the present, the ambitions of the team led by Frédéric Vassuer ahead of the Australian round are clearly different that last year. In Jeddah, drivers, team principal and the entire team realized that the gap from Red Bull is enormous. If this factual data is combined with the historic difficulty of the Maranello team in developing the basic specification, the being able to return to a competitive level seems a task very difficult to achieve.
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Ferrari. SF-23 development: a change of pace is needed compared to the past
Ever since Frederic Vassuer started his activity in Maranello, it was evident that the joys and sorrows of the 675 project were in any case attributable to the working group previously led by Mattia Binotto. In this sense, the French executive, in a certainly unfavorable technical and media context, can seize a great opportunity. Succeeding where his predecessors failed: growing a single-seater probably not wrong but certainly not fast in relation to what was evaluated in the simulations.
A by no means easy test for Fred Vasseur, which will put the reactivity of the technicians to the whip and provide the French manager with the opportunity to evaluate the work of the organizational structure of the historic Italian team. Mind you, everyone at Ferrari would have liked to see the flattering CFD simulations and wind tunnel simulations have the same results on the track.
Especially the staff close to Mattia Binotto, who believed the 2023 Formula 1 car would be able to fight against Red Bull: unfortunately the stopwatch, especially in the race, was a ruthless judge for the SF-23, at least in this first part of the season.
Ferrari: the extent of the corrections suggests that the aerodynamic philosophy is correct
Anyone who predicts a RB19 car colored in Ferrari red soon is probably misguided. The Maranello technicians will not reject the original “upper-floor” aerodynamic look introduced last year on the F1-75 with the distinctive geometry of the “bathtub” sidepods, as explained by F1 expert Roberto Cecere for FUnoanalisitecnica.
The aerodynamic team is looking for corrective measures that would allow the SF-23 to run with a minimum height between the surface and the floor at any speed. A behavior happily found in the virtual context but unexpectedly invalidated already during the pre-season testing session in Bahrain.
The Ferrari technicians probably took note of this during the very first test session in Bahrain when, starting from the setup studied in the simulator, the SF-23 was the only single-seater to show significant bouncing.
Since then, the engineers of the legendary Italian team have had to make a virtue of necessity, through setups that have sacrificed part of the “free” vertical load generated by the floor. It will be interesting to verify during the season whether the SF-23 will be subject to other changes, emulating the evolutionary strategy implemented by Mercedes with the W14 “B” version, or whether the 675 project will be frozen, which would implicitly confirm its failure.
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