Scuderia Ferrari is among the teams that have worked the hardest to bring innovations to the Jeddah Corniche circuit: the SF-23 in Bahrain seemed to be in difficulty due to the lack of aerodynamic load on a stop and go track like Sakhir, despite having shown that it has a good top speed.
In the second round of the 2023 Formula 1 season, the scenario substantially changed for the Maranello team: while the rivals adopted rear wings with less downforce (Red Bull, Mercedes and Aston Martin), the Scuderia did not hesitate to fit the two cars with the solution that was postponed twice in Bahrain due to unexpected failures (the DRS system in the winter pre-season testing session and the support of the mono-pylon in the free practice of the opening round).
The single-pylon support, as we have already said several times, ensures greater efficiency in the rear, but the main profile chosen, with a longer string and a spoon of a different design, allows for greater vertical thrust and costs something in terms of resistance to forward movement (drag), thus losing top speed.
The Scuderia tried to “cure” the excessive wear of the rear tires that had prevented Charles Leclerc’s SF-23 to challenge Red Bull at the Bahrain International Circuit, before the Monegasque was stopped by the issue of the electronic control unit: in Jeddah, Red Bull was once again the best in terms of top speeds with a margin of 5.2 km/h over the SF-23. A sign that the right balance is still being sought by the Maranello team.
Diego Tondi‘s aerodynamicists have introduced a front wing at the Jeddah Corniche circuit which improves the out-wash effect in the end part of the side bulkhead, following the concept indicated by Mercedes and then adopted by many, of opening an air passage which allows to direct the flow outside the front wheel.
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Also at the rear, under the more loaded wing, a beam wing with less drag was chosen to favor the long straights of high-speed at the Jeddah street circuit, while on the floor an element with a lateral trailing edge was observed curved upwards to improve the management of the “pneumatic miniskirt” that is generated with the specifically studied vortices.
In short, Scuderia Ferrari is still a “laboratory” in the works: the Maranello technicians have not yet found the right base line between ground clearance, suspension stiffness and downforce, the three main elements that determine performance with the current ground-effect Formula 1 cars.
The doubt that hovers in Maranello is that the SF-23 with the wide side and the upper excavation is a solution with fewer possibilities for development than the sidepods adopted by Red Bull and Aston Martin. In Mercedes they have understood that the “zero-pods” concept leads nowhere, so they will change the design direction.
An idea that Ferrari also evaluated in the last few months.
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