Ferrari arrives at the Marina Bay street circuit, which this weekends hosts the 18th round of the 2024 Formula 1 season, with one goal in mind: to continue along the lines of Monza and Baku. Winning in Singapore is never easy, but the Scuderia has done it several times before. The last time was just last season with Carlos Sainz, who delivered an outstanding race weekend. Today, the SF-24 is far more competitive than its predecessor. However, we know its flaws. One of these is suboptimal traction, which on a city circuit as twisty as the Asian one, packed with low-speed corners, is a crucial characteristic.
That said, analyzing the recent past, Ferrari has always performed well on tracks where the setup compromise is not very clear-cut. This is why Singapore could help mask the limitations of the Italian cars, keeping in mind that the setup of the car will primarily focus on the circuit’s guided sections. Moreover, the Prancing Horse will test the new front wing from the very first practice session. This is a genuine update and not just a simple version to adapt the load to Marina Bay’s layout.
The Maranello team has made some modifications to the main plane, lowered to better channel the airflow towards the floor’s inlets and improve its efficiency. Meanwhile, the three additional flaps show greater incidence near the nose, then relieve pressure towards the outside, promoting outwash—an effect used to divert airflow laterally and keep those disturbed by the front wheels clean. This is a true refinement maneuver to enhance the floor’s performance and stabilize the fluid mass flowing through it, creating stability.
Now let’s take a detailed look at how events unfolded for Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz in FP1 at the 4.94-kilometre Marina Bay Street Circuit:
Some chatter moves nimbly within the Ferrari garage. The first free practice session will already be crucial for the Scuderia, where all possible data will be collected on the new component of the SF-24. It remains to be seen whether a comparative test will take place or if the data gathered through sensors and flow visualization will be sufficient to assess the effectiveness of the new front wing cold. Weather conditions just minutes before FP1: 31.9 °C air temperature, 38.2 °C asphalt temperature. Humidity at 65%, wind speed at 2.2 km/h coming from the south.
The lights turn green and the two Ferrari drivers are in their cars. The mechanics signal and they’re off to the track. For this first run, as usual, the Ferrari drivers mount a set of hard tires. A “stable” tire that will allow them to study the work done in the previous days regarding the base setup. During the outlap, several constant speed runs are conducted to gather data on the front wing. The asphalt in Singapore is very dirty and thus “green” at this moment. For this reason, the Ferrari drivers are reminded of certain caution via radio.
The first attempt ends calmly without setting a time. Now they switch to Engine 4 mode, a mapping normally used during the race. Carlos Sainz opens up on the radio after his first attempt in his SF-24 car, mentioning understeer in the last corner. Charles Leclerc is quiet for now. Race engineer Riccardo Adami suggests a series of commands regarding corner speeds, gears to use, braking system, and differential at the apex. After cooling the tires, they go back to pushing to test the Marina Bay asphalt again, this time with more determination.
We can add that, considering the dirty track and the harder tires, the Scuderia seems to have a good base setup. There is slight general understeer, but keeping the above factors in mind, everything appears to be under control. They return to the track with various changes, including mapping adjustments. While Charles Leclerc continues to string together laps to regain confidence with his car, the Spaniard is studying the update in detail, providing all the necessary info. Carlos Sainz talks about more front load that still needs to be stabilized.
From the on-board footage of the Spaniard, we can observe the flex of the front wing. It seems there are no substantial differences compared to the recent past, as the wing is currently the old version. The Ferrari team puts together another run, which leads to the need to change the front load for car number 55: “plus 4.” He does this by changing the nose to test the new front wing version. In the meantime, before heading to the pits, they conduct more constant speed tests on Carlos Sainz’s car.
In general, it seems we’re witnessing a true study phase for Ferrari, which must understand the behavior of the SF-24 with the new component on board as well as possible. There aren’t many feedbacks from the Ferrari drivers, but analyzing the handling, it seems the aerodynamic platform is well balanced. It’s worth noting that the Scuderia, so far, unlike other teams, has chosen only to use the white-marked tire compound. Therefore, it remains to be seen whether grip will improve once another set of tires is mounted.
After a short pause, they switch directly to the Soft compound to test the Maranello car with the extra grip offered by the more performant tires available. A lot of attention is given to warming up on the outlap to introduce the correct amount of energy into the tire carcass. After that, they engage push mode and go full gas. Carlos Sainz is very fast in the second sector but is three tenths slower than his teammate overall. The Ferrari team requests a change to the front end with an additional flap adjustment: “point 2 up.”
During these two laps to cool the tires, along with the correction on front downforce, various suggestions come in regarding handling, with relative modifications to different parameters of the Formula 1 cars, including those related to the hybrid system to better optimize the support from the motor generators during traction. The changes made to the load have further improved the car’s balance, apparently. There’s less understeer now with a slight oversteer exiting some corners in the second sector. To be even more precise, we can add a few more details.
It seems there are still some “issues” during the entry phase with the Soft tires. We noticed some slight instability approaching the apex in certain corners, particularly in the second and third sectors, where towards the end of the lap, it appears that traction performance is not yet fully under control. It’s likely that the tires could be overheating, as the acceleration phase in corner 1 was really optimal. This connects to the importance of the hysteresis cycle on this track, where during tire deformation on the outlap, everything must be perfect.
After three flying laps, the two Ferrari cars return to the garage, where the Maranello team’s drivers carefully observe the telemetry. In the last outing, Ferrari goes back out with hard tires. In this case, they conduct a brief simulation of race pace. With a high amount of fuel on board, the two SF-24 single-seaters do not lose their handling. There is a slight oversteer exiting some corners, which is nonetheless well managed by the Ferrari drivers. In conclusion, we can say that the start looks promising. More info will be collected in the second free practice session for the Singapore Grand Prix and more details about the track performance will become clearer.
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