More than a year has passed since, in the summer of 2023, Ferrari’s team principal, Fréd Vasseur, talked about the “noisy” recruitment campaign to strengthen the team’s technical staff. About eighteen months after those words, the situation at Ferrari looks very different from what the French manager found when he arrived in early 2023, with a car that was the fourth force on track. Today, in fact, the Scuderia appears to be growing and has a promising future after securing second place in the Constructors’ Championship last season and making a series of moves to return to the top: from the signing of Lewis Hamilton to the contract renewal of Charles Leclerc, including the recruitment of technicians with whom the technical staff has been reshaped.
Technicians and infrastructure
After the arrival of technicians from various teams, in recent months the technical office saw the arrival of a new technical director, Loic Serra from Mercedes. A turnover that, as mentioned, has reshaped the GeS and seems not to be over yet, as Ferrari is still bringing in professionals. A complex back-and-forth to manage for Frederic Vasseur, who is now tasked with completing the restructuring and bringing Ferrari back to success with the SF-25, which was entirely created under his management and entrusted to the best driver pairing. This car will have to end the world championship drought that has lasted since 2007. In short, a car that will have no choice but to fight to win. To do so, it can benefit from the design and development of the Maranello wind tunnel, which, since last summer, has been updated to push aerodynamic research further and gain greater benefits from work at home.
New developments in hardware
Ferrari, therefore, took advantage of the summer break to update its wind tunnel, now equipped with a more modern moving floor that will allow Diego Tondi‘s aerodynamic team to conduct a more in-depth and accurate investigation into airflow than was possible until last season. Specifically, Renzo Piano’s work has been fitted with a “rubber” floor instead of a metallic one, allowing the model of the car to travel closer to the ground. Moreover, technicians would have also recorded improvements in the handling of scale tires (in limited numbers) and the heights of the model, which can now be lower without risking “bottoming out” that could damage the scale car.
Finally, not least, the updated wind tunnel has allowed the technicians to study the behavior of the upcoming single-seater not only in front wind conditions but also in yaw, with a steering angle, following a research direction that had been initiated by Red Bull and that has, in fact, led to important results.
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