On Thursday, during the first free practice session for the 2024 F1 Las Vegas Grand Prix, Scuderia Ferrari equipped Carlos Sainz’s car with a newly designed floor, specifically as part of a wind tunnel correlation exercise. Despite its debut on the track, the floor was never intended for use beyond this single session during the race weekend.
The updated floor, noted on the FIA’s list of new aerodynamic components for Las Vegas, initially raised speculation that Ferrari might be seeking a performance edge for the season’s final three races. However, the team clarified that the component’s purpose was purely experimental, aimed at gathering crucial data rather than enhancing immediate performance.
Ferrari’s decision to invest resources in developing and manufacturing a floor for just one session underscores the significant value the team places on the insights it provided. The data from this exercise will likely inform future developments and refinements to the SF-24.
The new floor offered no direct performance boost, as reflected in the session results. Carlos Sainz ended FP1 in sixth place, trailing teammate Charles Leclerc by two-tenths of a second: “It’s simply a development part, and actually it’s a correlation process,” explained senior performance engineer Jock Clear ahead of the first free practice session for the Las Vegas GP. “So it’s a floor that we only have one of, and Carlos will run it in FP1.” – he added.
“And basically it’s not bringing more performance. It’s just specifically different in one certain area, and that area is the area we want to look at in terms of correlation with what the tunnel is telling us. So it’s a bit like when you have these issues on the car, and you’re trying to work your way around which bit of the floor is affecting corner entry, or mid corner/apex understeer, or whatever, you need to really be very specific about which parts of the floor are going to make the difference. And actually, that’s quite a difficult process. So one of the things that it’s quite valuable to do occasionally is to bring a part that’s specifically very, very targeted, and say, ‘Okay, does that do what we think it’ll do?’ So it won’t make the car any quicker, it won’t give him any more downforce, but we need to look at the numbers and say, yes, when we did that, that’s the result we’ve got. And that’s a correlation process for the tunnel.” – the British engineer pointed out.
Jock Clear acknowledged that the insights gained from testing the new floor would play a pivotal role in fine-tuning the wind tunnel, with the benefits extending directly into Ferrari’s development program for the 2025 Formula 1 season:
“I think next year’s cars, obviously there’s not a great big rule change, nothing particularly dramatic. So they will, to a large extent, be a development of what teams already have. And that’s probably the case for us as well. So everything you’re doing at the moment is obviously enhancing your learning for what will probably end up on a ’25 car. And again, which probably comes back to this floor that we’re bringing for FP1 here, there are things that you specifically are thinking, okay, we’re going to run out of time. We’ve only got three races left, and we really need to understand this particular aspect, because we think that’s important for next year. So there are these things that you can target in these last three races to say this is our last opportunity. It’s not like we have a winter of testing like we used to do 20 years ago. Testing won’t arrive until February, so we’ve really got to identify on this car the areas that we think are going to be very pertinent for next year. So that’s part of our process.” – the Ferrari senior performance engineer continued.
Elaborating on the considerable effort involved in delivering the new floor to Las Vegas, he remarked:
“I think we’ve been quite open in effectively being public about the fact that we brought this floor, and I think you’ll probably find teams do this all the time. Obviously a floor is a big part, and actually you have to make a commitment, because it’s an expensive part as well. So it’s not the kind of thing you’re going to do every week. But there are bits on the car that are developments and correlating things that are on the car every week, little sensors and little fins on the front brake ducts and things like that. So the fact that we’ve obviously put some effort into bringing a floor here, it’s an important correlation, and we certainly think if it gives us the information we want, then yeah, it’s worth doing. That’s why we’re doing it.” – Jock Clear concluded.
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