Mark Hughes explains Ferrari ingenuity in re-engineering mediocre 2020 car into much quicker SF21

Formula 1 journalist Mark Hughes explains Scuderia Ferrari’s ingenuity in re-engineering mediocre 2020 car into much quicker SF21, in a recent article published on Formula1.com:

“Ferrari lost out on a real opportunity of being in contention for victory in Hungary, given the first corner mayhem which took a Mercedes, two Red Bulls and a McLaren out of contention and led indirectly to Lewis Hamilton falling to the back. On a day in which Charles Leclerc was also taken out and the win was fought out between an Alpine and an Aston Martin, Ferrari could feel frustrated that their one remaining car of Carlos Sainz was bottled up behind the third-place Williams of Nicholas Latifi for much of the first stint. Were it not for that, Ferrari may have had a victory to add to their 2021 brace of pole positions, underlining their big progress since last year and the effectiveness of the SF21’s upgrade from the preceding SF1000.

More details are now known about the car than when it was launched at the beginning of the season and it’s clear just how much innovation was incorporated into the upgrade despite the homologation restrictions, which limited development from last season to this, by a token system. That token system limited the number of major changes which could be made and in the case of Ferrari effectively gave them the choice of making major structural changes at the front of the car or the rear.

Ideally they would have changed both, as their rear suspension and aerodynamics and their nose shape aerodynamics both had a lot of scope for improvement. But the token system didn’t allow for that, so Ferrari concentrated on where it felt the bigger limitation was – the rear end.

Key to this was a new gearbox casing, sweeping further back than before – and also tilted upwards. The longer casing allowed the rear suspension to be swept back in a similar way to that of the 2020 Mercedes, creating more space around the diffuser for aerodynamic exploitation.

The token system meant Ferrari couldn’t mount the suspension into the crash structure – the way Mercedes had done it – but instead they stretched the gearbox back (below) much further to achieve the same effect.”