Scuderia Ferrari believes it has resolved its 2024 bouncing problems, with British senior performance engineer Jock Clear attributing the situation to the challenges of the current ground-effect regulations.
The Maranello team introduced a floor upgrade for the SF-24 single seater at the Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona, expecting to build on gains from the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix update in May. However, the new floor caused bouncing in high-speed corners at the Spanish circuit, forcing the Ferrari technicians to revert to the previous design for the British Grand Prix. The Maranello team then adjusted its underbody geometry ahead of the Hungarian Grand Prix at the Hungaroring circuit before the summer break.
Scuderia Ferrari’s form improved in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix at the Baku City Circuit, where Charles Leclerc secured pole position and narrowly missed out on the race victory. The Italian side also looked competitive in Singapore until the various problems encountered by Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc at the Marina Bay street circuit in the qualifying session disrupted their progress.
Jock Clear explained that Ferrari had to investigate a discrepancy between wind tunnel data and on-track performance before shifting its development approach.
“You’re never fully confident – but I think it’s a good picture of how the ebb and flow of everybody’s development goes. But you’re probably asking the same questions to [other teams] – have you lost your way? And certainly after Spain, we didn’t feel we’d lost our way, but there was some anomaly between what was happening in the tunnel and what we were seeing on track, and we had to get on top of that. That’s just the process; when you see an anomaly, you have to get on top of it, try and understand it, and then get back on track. And I think what you’ve seen since is that we’ve understood it, we got back on track, we just have to be eyes wide open for what the next anomaly will be, because there will be another one because that is the process at the moment.” – the English senior performance engineer pointed out on this matter.
“So it’s not that sometimes the development works, sometimes these developments don’t work: the development process is exactly that you are testing something new every week. We’re confident that our process is working, confident that we’re on top of everything. We’ll just wait for the next banana skin.” – he added.
Jock Clear highlighted the difficulties in developing floor geometry under the current rules regulations, noting that the wind tunnel struggles to accurately simulate a car’s performance across dynamic conditions. The British engineer emphasized that variations in floor height play a crucial role, as even small changes in ride height significantly impact downforce levels, making the SF-24 single-seater more sensitive to these adjustments.
“I think ever since we brought these ground effect cars back, it’s presented challenges that have… in simple terms, when the car’s a long way from the floor and the floor is not generating huge amounts of downforce based on its proximity to the floor, then the tunnel can be pretty accurate. But as soon as you get into what’s happening over a kerb, what’s happening when you’re bouncing, the tunnel can’t do that. We can bounce the car up and down. But of course, the data then looks a mess. But however much the data looks a mess on track, the driver has to drive it.” – the English senior performance engineer explained.
“There’s a certain level of correlation between the tunnel and the track, that it’s difficult that you’re ever going to get 100% fidelity. You’re always going to have these anomalies and with the ground effect, the anomalies are bigger because that proximity to the ground becomes all the more powerful as soon as it. When it gets to zero, you lose all your downforce, And when it comes back up to five millimetres, you get loads of downforce and you get into this really peaky area on the floor. And everybody’s challenged with that all the time.” – Jock Clear concluded.
