Scuderia Ferrari, as seen in the first four races of the 2024 Formula 1 championship, has been clearly the second force on track, behind the world champion team. The Italian side is only 21 points behind Red Bull, and most importantly, Ferrari has twice as many points as last year. Now hopes for a less depressing championship seem to lie in the Maranello’s ability to develop the SF-24 single-seater. After three wrong cars, Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has already given up on Max Verstappen, declaring him unreachable for anyone; McLaren has said already from the pre-season testing session that they are not at the level of Ferrari, let alone Red Bull. Aston Martin is struggling to be a little bit better on Sundays, despite a seemingly rather extreme car that has never greatly improved the operational picture on the track compared to the good start of one year ago.
Despite these cars being a linear baseline for the current two years, Ferrari Head of Aerodynamics Department Enrico Cardile had spoken about staying ready and flexible in terms of interventions on the SF-24. Why is that?
The budget cap will limit much of the development work in view of the 2025 Formula 1 season because the new 2026 cars will absorb 80% of the resources. Therefore more targeted choices will be needed as performances are converging, provided no wrong paths are taken during the journey. Some teams have also had to take significant steps back, as can be seen with Alpine and Sauber for example, in order to find greater potential in the medium to long term. Scuderia Ferrari changed the concept a year ago, sacrificing half a season, and today Mercedes is still trapped in correlation errors; essentially, the factory promises a solid project and the track then shows a car with far less performance and potential. The Ferrari car has a more stable platform and flexibility is needed. The Maranello technicians will assess benefits and will adopt them, being ready to change programs if needed as confirmed by the technical director two months ago at the Ferrari SF-24 official presentation.
Technical changes came after some evaluations behind closed doors
The team of technicians led by Italian aerodynamicist Enrico Cardile has decided on the first significant development package. It will be a massive package that will push to the limit the seemingly “conventional” concepts which we are currently seeing on the SF-24 single-seater. We can venture to call it a “version 2.0” SF-24 that we will see at the Imola circuit next month. The red car will adopt an aerodynamic design initially tested and left aside at that moment, but which, in parallel evaluation, with the initially planned program, has found confirmation. The radiator inlet mouths will be “reversed,” adopting a different compromise to ensure greater development opportunities.
The SF-24 car will feature a new inlet, which not only will be more extreme in terms of openings but – contrary to the initial orientation – will resume the idea of the Red Bull with the reversed lip, demonstrating the flexibility Enrico Cardile spoke of. An aggressiveness in some respects contrary to the development plans adopted by Scuderia Ferrari in recent years. However, some in-depth studies in the wind tunnel, carried out in parallel with current solutions, have provided gains more interesting than expected. Hence the flexibility to wait in a strictly confidential manner a few weeks longer than the initial schedule, postponing the first package that would have been partially ready from Asia to Miami, directly to Italy for the Imola race weekend.
Fred Vasseur and Enrico Cardile have asked to put everything needed in the car, without frills or fears: the aerodynamicists led by Diego Tondi can now push
The Imola package will be the first of the three major upgrades this year and will include the new Red Bull-inspired sidepods, according to information reported by Formu1a.uno. The new inlets, inverted compared to the initial solution, will indeed be inspired by RB20 car, but not an exact copy. On the evolved version of the SF-24, the Italian technicians will adopt their own interpretation of the reversed mouths, present in a less extreme way also on McLaren MCL38. The most important novelty in terms of “pure performance” instead comes from the modifications to the floor, with a restyling of the diffusers. A minor upgrade to the front wing is being finalized, and it has been decided not to anticipate anything for the Miami Grand Prix, at least for now. Changes to the 2.0 version of the Ferrari car will also concern the deflectors on the cockpit sides.
The SF-24 has represented on the track what the Ferrari engineers expected. If everything goes as it should and the performances continue to be consistent with expectations, the technicians expect an increase of 1 tenth of downforce and 1 and a half tenths of efficiency. The goal is to widen the settings, also for the benefit of performance in qualifying. Having more efficient downforce in the corners indirectly grants technicians greater aggressiveness in terms of mechanical settings.
The attempt is clear, that is, to try to reduce the gap from Red Bull and try to put pressure on Max Verstappen, as confirmed by Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur after the latest round of the 2024 Formula 1 championship, the Japanese Grand Prix.
Leave a Reply