Ferrari SF-25 – Maranello engineers testing a new floor at Red Bull Ring ahead of updated suspension debut. Ferrari plans to test a new floor on the SF-25 at the Austrian GP.

The Ferrari SF-25 season could turn around in the summer, with the team ready to debut an updated floor in Austria.

Scuderia Ferrari’s expectations were anything but a disappointing second place in the constructors’ championship, over one hundred points behind McLaren. The package that debuted in Bahrain during testing immediately showed something was wrong, with feelings later confirmed in Australia. With a significant upgrade coming in the summer, the Ferrari SF-25 should also receive a new floor for the Austrian GP.

While McLaren is fully in the title fight for both championships, Ferrari wants to recover the ground lost since Australia. Since its official debut at Fiorano, the SF-25 has shown behavior consistent with simulations, indicating that the rear suspension problem was already known by Frederic Vasseur’s team.

However, the problem definitively emerged when the team had to put the SF-25 into the safest operating window for the first race weekend. The transition from Friday to Saturday seemed traumatic for drivers and fans, who found a car completely changed in its handling. Understeer, poor traction, and not very effective in high-speed corners. The problem, as revealed by the Italian media, lies in the rear suspension, later confirmed by other sites as well. Loic Serra’s work, technical director since last October 1, immediately focused on solving the problem, without pause since the first race in Australia.

Ferrari, new floor to exploit with the “unlocked” suspension
Its return to Barcelona showed a slight step forward for the car, balancing compromise setups and new data analysis in preparation for the new suspension’s debut. The rear end will also be accompanied by a revised floor for the SF-25. Contrary to what one might think, the new specification is arriving for Austria, as confirmed by some of our sources. The upgrade will be completed with the suspension for the Silverstone GP, debuting a week later. The changes will affect several areas of the spec. One of these is the diffuser, where the new gearbox bell, which houses the suspension, will undergo modifications to accommodate the updated kinematics. Updates to the Venturi channels are also possible to redistribute aerodynamic flows differently.

This choice may seem quite strange, but Ferrari has chosen the GP at the Red Bull Ring to test the new spec with the ideal mechanical setup. The setup should finally be “unlocked” with the arrival of the updated rear end, following somewhat the path taken by the MCL39. The English car is currently the only one that does not roll, as we reported in our exclusive content collected in Barcelona.