Balance sought, lost, and then found again. According to the Italian daily newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport, this seems to be the path followed by Scuderia Ferrari with the EVO version of its SF-23 single-seater.
Because more than the search for performance, which they claim to be confident in having in the 2023 car, the massive package of updates introduced at the Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona had as its primary goal to improve the overall balance of the car.
What troubled Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz was not so much the lack of downforce, but rather the constant variations in it. The upgrades in Montmelò are meant to solve these distribution problems.
However, in Barcelona, the SF-23 EVO seemed to struggle even more than the previous version. Why? In Spain, the Maranello team on track couldn’t find a base setup capable of reproducing the downforce and efficiency values that emerged in the simulator. The reason, as reported by La Gazzetta dello Sport, would be attributed to an incorrect balance between the front and rear ends, especially in terms of managing ride heights.
The new floor fights porpoising:
Analyzing the updates introduced in Barcelona and then reintroduced in Canada, it can be noted that the channels under the floor have not been radically modified in their profile but rather in the radius of their convexity.
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By doing so, the engineers in Maranello have divided the floor area into several parts. First of all, three zones have been created between the front and rear edges. The central area has then been further divided into two other areas. The objective is to vary the pressures under the car in order to reduce the porpoising phenomenon as the load increases.
The reason behind this intervention lies primarily in the fact that without an adequate solution to contain the SF-23 car‘s bouncing, it would make no sense to introduce solutions to increase downforce, as it would only trigger further instability, negating any advantage for the drivers.
