The 2023 Formula One championship is not yet concluded, but teams are already focused on the next year. Speaking about the 2024 car, Jock Clear explained that one of the key goals of the new project is to expand the operating window of the car, making the setup work on different tracks simpler and providing better flexibility to boost driver confidence.
Ferrari’s 2023 Formula One season has been marked with ups and downs, partly due to a car with a reduced operating window that has, on multiple occasions, challenged both the drivers on the track and the engineers in finding the best setup to compensate for certain limitations.
The SF-23 has proven to be a fast car in specific situations, being the only team besides Red Bull to secure a victory in a Grand Prix. However, it has also exhibited clear shortcomings in various events of the championship. This performance gap has been observed in the comparison between qualifying and the race, with the Maranello car generally more competitive in a single lap than over long distances, where tire wear has often been a limiting factor.
These challenges have prompted Ferrari engineers to work behind the scenes to have more flexibility with the 2024 car, attempting to broaden the usage window so that specific peaks do not occur only under specific conditions. The hope is to follow the path that made the RB19 successful, where an extensive usage window became its strength, allowing it to contend for victory in almost all events of this championship.
“The car this year is very different from the previous season. It’s always a very difficult car; we went on pole in the United States and Mexico, but it’s still a very challenging car. It goes out of the ideal window very quickly, and that’s a difficulty for us, understanding why. I think we’ve understood why; it could be part of this car’s DNA. For next year, we are focusing on making the car more forgiving, a car that doesn’t have such a restricted operating window,” explained Jock Clear, outlining a key point of the new project ahead of the Las Vegas Grand Prix, which is scheduled to take place next weekend.
“The positive aspect is that, at this point in the season, we are at least in a position where we know how to put the car in that narrow operating window. In race situations, you clearly can’t operate in such a narrow window; the race is long, the tires wear out, so you need a wider window to have a good race. And that’s the strength of Red Bull, their operating window is very wide,” the British engineer added.
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This narrow operating window has also negatively impacted driver confidence, often misleading in the search for the ideal setup to extract more from the car. Throughout the championship, engineers have intervened on multiple occasions with various technical innovations to try to reduce this unpredictable nature of the car and expand its usage window, aiming to provide greater flexibility to the drivers. This theme has especially affected Charles Leclerc, who, after a strong start to the championship, experienced a more complex mid-season, especially in terms of the car’s feel.
Due to some shortcomings and its excessive unpredictability, it was often necessary to drive the SF-23 with an understeer setup, deviating from Charles Leclerc‘s preferences. However, the latest updates have once again modified certain aspects of the car, restoring more confidence to the Monegasque driver thanks to a balance closer to his driving style: “I think so,” explained Jock Clear when asked if finding better consistency in managing the car’s behavior had helped Leclerc regain more confidence.
“But, looking at it from another perspective, Carlos and Charles have been very close throughout this season. Both our drivers have pushed hard. Charles struggled in some races to be faster than Carlos, but there were also races where Carlos was really very fast, like Singapore,” added the British engineer.
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