Ferrari vs Red Bull is not just turning out to be a challenge between drivers but a race between development and technical teams. The first races showed us how the F1-75 and the RB18 are very close cars from a performance point of view but with opposite characteristics: the car from Maranello gives its best in the slow sections, especially in the traction phase, that of Milton Keynes responds in terms of maximum speed thanks to less drag.
Red Bull: after the weight reduction between Imola and Spain, the rear is more balanced with the front
The important difference in terms of top speed was especially true at the start of the season, when the Anglo-Austrian car could not load the rear too much due to an insufficiently balanced front. The cause, which was the main problem to be solved on the Milton Keynes car, was the excessive weight. Red Bull started the season well above the initial minimum weight, set at 795 kg, and then raised to 798 kg at the request of the teams to deal with differences with the real weights of some accessories as well as stiffeners necessary to mitigate porpoising.
Having an overweight car does not only affect the lap times due to the extra kilograms that are brought to the track (usually 10 kg more are worth three and a half tenths), but also and above all the possibility of using ballast for correct weight distribution.
This led to, especially in Saudi Arabia on the first real front limited circuit of the calendar, the rear load essentially depending on how much you could put on a front to protect. Red Bull used much more loaded setups than Ferrari. Hence the important differences in terms of top speed which, in the case of the Arabian circuit, had even reached 15 km / h. A value that for many meant very low efficiency of the F1-75, however, the main motivation was to be associated with the very different load levels used by the two teams.
After the weight reduction, carried out in Imola and then completed in Spain, where the Anglo-Austrian team removed just under 10 kg from its RB18 (now there are few to remove), the balance has improved also and above all in those medium circuits with high downforce where the rear load must necessarily be balanced with the front one. Above all, the set-ups, partly the top speeds, have become much more similar between the two cars. However, the RB18 was even faster on the straight, especially in those open DRS phases that could not only be associated with a car concept that was certainly more efficient in itself thanks to a rather accentuated undercut and very efficient as speeds increased.
Ferrari improved aerodynamic efficiency thanks to a new rear wing layout
While Red Bull was able to extract greater performance by lightening the RB18, Ferrari has been working on fronts that had a common goal: to improve the efficiency of the F1-75. The car designed by the Maranello team’s technicians was inspired by the SF70H, also the first car of a new series of regulations, which shares with the F1-75 the characteristics of excellent qualities in slow sections, in phase traction and tire management. But not excellent aerodynamic efficiency, which means that with the same engine power, the Italian car can have a deficit of 15 km / h as in Jeddah from compared to the RB18. The data tells us that they amount to just under half (5 km / h).
The F1-75 is an efficient car in itself, much more than one might think from the outside. However, not as much as the RB18. This is why a lot of work has been done on the floor, trying to get more performance from the important aerodynamic macro component of this new generation of cars, while limiting porpoising that has never really abandoned the Italian car.
The most important difference in speed between the two cars has always been seen with the DRS open, once Red Bull has managed to get on track with aerodynamic set-ups similar to those of the F1-75, as if the rear wing, an aerodynamic component that takes an important chunk of the overall drag of an F1 car, were it less efficient.
As explained by formu1a.uno in mid-April, Ferrari was working on a new rear wing for improved efficiency. A new rear wing with a modified configuration, to then be adapted to the various load levels required by the different circuits.
Starting with the rear wing brought to Spain, Ferrari has given more importance in the production of aerodynamic load to the mobile wing; the new configuration in fact has a more rectilinear profile also on the outside, this to ensure lower aerodynamic resistance for the F1-75 when the DRS was opened, thus significantly limiting the mileage gap compared to the RB18s.
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A feature also maintained with the wing that made its debut in Baku (it should have been on the track already in Miami), and especially with the rear that was brought to the track yesterday by Charles Leclerc in Canada. A wing that Ferrari defined as “a part of the car’s development process, focused on increasing the overall efficiency of the rear wing”. It is a medium-low load specification that also features a profile update on the sides of the mobile wing, now more curvilinear, and which will serve the Monegasque driver to try to recover as many positions as possible in the Grand Prix in the next few hours.
Ferrari now has 5 specific wings in its arsenal: two with the old configuration, the medium-load one used in Jeddah and which Carlos Sainz is also using in Canada – the direct comparison with Charles Leclerc – and the medium-high load used in Bahrain. While three with the new configuration: the high-load wing of Spain, the low-load wing of Baku / Miami and the new medium-low load wing of Canada.
Ferrari also brought a new beam wing specification, mounted only on Charles Leclerc’s F1-75 as it works in symbiosis with the new rear wing, according to formu1a.uno
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