Smaller aero efficiency gap to RB18 allowed Ferrari F1-75 car to overtake more easily in Austria

Smaller aero efficiency gap to RB18 allowed Ferrari F1-75 car to overtake more easily in Austria. Why Ferrari was able to overtake more easily in Austria.

During the 2022 Formula 1 season, with the passing of races, a certain convergence, not so much in the macro philosophies of the two cars, was expected between the Scuderia Ferrari F1-75 and the Red Bull RB18 cars, which proved to be the best cars after the introduction of the new rules and regulations for 2022.

Red Bull has gradually improved in the slow areas, working mainly on the front and in making it accept more load for the RB18, while Ferrari focused on the fast zones, indeed the very fast ones, that is above all in the second parts of the straights, in those areas where the use of the mobile wing is allowed: “In these first races of the season we had a disadvantage compared to Red Bull especially in the areas where the DRS could be used, with a greater effect for them” Mattia Binotto confirmed several times during the last few weeks.

While Red Bull has tried to extract greater performance by reducing the weight of the RB18, Ferrari has been working on fronts that had a common goal: to improve the efficiency of the F1-75 car. Work was focused on the floor, sidepods, which made their debut at Silverstone, but also and above all a new rear wing with a different configuration. Starting with the rear wing brought to Spain, Ferrari has tried to focus more on the importance of generating 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 to the F1-75 when the DRS was opened, thus significantly limiting the top speed compared to the RB18 cars, as confirmed by Giuliano Duchessa and Paolo D’Alessandro for formu1a.uno.

However, the most efficient wing of those brought to the track is the medium-low load wing introduced in Canada on Charles Leclerc’s F1-75. “We have worked hard on these new rear wings, first introduced with Charles in Canada and then at Silverstone on both cars. This has narrowed the gap in terms of speed, which is now almost negligible as compared to Red Bull. We closed the gap with them in this sense” – confirmed Mattia Binotto. It is no coincidence that in Austria, the F1-75 was able to overtake Max Verstappen’s RB18 rather easily while in Canada, with the medium-load wing of the older generation, Carlos Sainz was not even able to try the attack against the World Champion. With a car on par in the power zones, i.e. in the straight, the problem could have been to generate less downforce than the RB18. And this didn’t happen. The F1-75 made the difference precisely in terms of cornering grip, thanks to what is a package that has now become much more complete and competitive.