Historically, the construction of the Pirelli tyres requires a lot of load (aerodynamic and mechanical) to take advantage of the ideal operating window without triggering sliding and thermal degradation. Red Bull and Aston have no problem pushing the tires, based on the data from the Bahrain Grand Prix and the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, just like the Ferrari F1-75 didn’t, at least before the car ran at higher ground clearance (after the introduction of Technical Directive 39).
The rather late regulation updates ended up changing some aerodynamic settings into the unknown. Several technical directors have complained that these changes have shuffled the cards too much, because they were approved when the 2023 cars were already in a very advanced stage of project design. It is something that has certainly ended up facilitating Red Bull, as had been predicted by Mercedes at that time. Today the Austrian side has an advantage that is difficult to reduce, even considering the penalty in terms of development hours due to exceeding the budget cap, which in any case is not so significant, despite the fact that the Milton Keynes team wants us to believe otherwise, as explained by F1 expert Giuliano Duchessa for formu1a.uno.
Despite a certain delay of the 675 project, Scuderia Ferrari was convinced that it presented itself much better. As mentioned, the car not only does not generate the expected load percentage but the problem is that it does so inconsistently. The data shows that the SF-23 car performs poorly in the zones between 150 and 190 km/h, when at those speeds the load generated is above 900 kg. The technicians used the free practice sessions of the first two appointments to conduct experiments and recalibrate the simulation and tunnel data. Even the changes made to the floor in Saudi Arabia were designed for this purpose, so much so that they have been set aside for the rest of the weekend and “will be useful for possible future use”.
According to Carlos Sainz now “the car behaves exactly like in the wind tunnel”, which would really be a positive point – “We know where the problem lies in the tunnel, what the weak point is. We also know how to develop the car further but we need time to produce the updates. This could completely change our season.” a decisive and positive view from the Spanish driver at the end of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix in Jeddah.
It would seem something closely related to the surface and the ride heights, which affect the (mal) functioning of the tyres. In Maranello they confirm, not surprisingly, that updates will arrive for the floor area in the next rounds. Furthermore, while most of the rival teams unloaded their wings, Jeddah’s configuration was against the trend and more loaded than Sakhir, which allowed a good response in the slow corners but paying the price in the straight for about 3-4 km/h compared to the Bahrain rear wing.
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The Ferrari SF-23 sadly seems to remain the victim of a too rigid post-Technical Directive 39 setting, which penalizes especially the use of harder tyres, due to a floor that flexes less, with Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz not being able to convincingly improve the their pace, even with empty tanks. The next two months will show whether the new rules have really destroyed the basic concept of Ferrari, in addition to the zeropods one, which has already been rejected by the Mercedes engineers.
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