Scuderia Ferrari seems on course to achieve its weight goal with its new 2023 Formula 1 challenger, as all teams are working hard to eliminate excess bulk.
A key part of the Maranello team’s optimisation process ahead of the 2023 F1 campaign has focused on several important areas of improvement that the Italian side is confident it can improve their chances for the new championship, as Ferrari want to challenge Red Bull and Mercedes for the world titles.
The first key area is related to aerodynamics, with the Maranello team working hard to further refine the innovative sidepod design seen on the F1-75: the goal is to better manage airflow, which should lead to more downforce being generated by the car, while at the same time reducing drag.
In addition to this, the Italian side also wants to reduce the weight of its car for the next F1 season, even going as far as targeting to get below the 796kg limit: this would allow the Maranello technicians to add ballast to the car and therefore significantly improve its balance, while also optimising tyre management, two key factors that the F1-75 challenged lacked especially in the second part of the previous championship.
Ferrari will officially present its new challenger, internally known by the codenamed 675, on 14 February, but work is already advanced on its pre-assembly process, as the basic concepts and design choices have long been signed off by the team led by Mattia Binotto last year.
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E lot of effort was put into weight reduction, with opponents Mercedes and Red Bull both having struggled with heavy cars during the 2022 F1 campaign. While Red Bull proved able to gradually improve the car last year, to the point of having the fastest car on the grid in the second half of the season, neither the Austrian side nor Mercedes was able to reduce the weight as much as they would have liked to.
All teams have therefore focused on this key aspect in view of 2023, with the Italian media pointing out at the end of last season that Red Bull had already passed the crash tests for a new lightweight chassis which was about 3kg under the weight of the title winning RB18.
According to Motorsport, Scuderia Ferrari has now also made significant gains in terms of weight, a factor that will have two main benefits: on the one hand a lighter car means laptime gains, while at the same time Ferrari should be able to better manage the Pirelli tyres thanks to an improved balance which can derive from placing ballast in the right area a key component in reduced degradation that the F1-75 car was missing for most of the season.
With the Maranello team having focused on eliminating every gramme of weight possible, how effective this process actually was cannot be known for sure until the new Formula 1 car is fully assembled and finished, as confirmed by a Ferrari insider, who explained that “the answers will only be found when the Formula 1 car is put on the scales.”
Yet for now the first impressions seem positive, which will be good news for new Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur, who officially starts his activity in Maranello in a few days.
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