Ferrari: In PL1 Ferrari works between rear wing and ground clearance | FormulaPassion.it

Ferrari, the work on the wings in the PL1 of Bahrain The 2023 season finally begins with the first free practice session of the Bahrain Grand Prix. Given the high temperature of the track (about 40 degrees), which in fact makes the track a not particularly reliable test bench in view of qualifying and the evening race, the teams actually continued to carry out a test programme, albeit more oriented to this specific weekend. It was also the case for Ferrari with a first run covered by Sainz and Leclerc with hind wings in different configurations , the first with the same medium-downforce wing seen in the tests, while the Monegasque with the new medium-high downforce wing but with a single support pylon. The monopilon structure of the rear wing is evidently designed to limit aerodynamic resistance and, perhaps, also favor the bending of the wing itself at high speeds, but, as seen from the images, the stability to oscillations due to curbs and jolts are significantly affected, with a particularly striking oscillatory movement of the entire rear wing. We don't know why then you chose to return to test setup also for Leclerc it is precisely structural, or if there is an overall aerodynamic preference towards this configuration, but something could be guessed from the comparison of the data and from what happened on the track. See also Leclerc-Sainz, the confrontation First of all, in the first meters of the session we saw good behavior from Leclerc's car, especially as regards the rear, with sudden snaps almost completely absent, on the contrary of Sainz, who showed an accelerator tracing along the lap highlighting just what appeared to be high rear instability. However, it was interesting to listen to the Spaniard's team radio on the wall, in which Sainz complained that the car behaved too subject to understeer, asking to increase the load on the front. The conclusion that can be drawn is therefore that Sainz's car had such a large level of understeer as to force the driver to forcefully correct the corner entries. Generally when this happens, there comes a moment in which the front regains grip almost suddenly and the car ends up starting off in oversteer, losing the rear, which, precisely, happened to Carlos Sainz. Once the pit stop was made, Sainz recorded his best session time and below we compare it with Leclerc's lap done under equal conditions (at about the same time and within what appears to be the same simulation from the data comparative). Ferrari, solutions are being sought for front end management The impression is of a car with a generally more balanced rear for Leclerc, which shows a more progressive accelerator pattern and less subject to the many jolts that we see instead for Sainz. Leclerc manages to be more progressive and effective in fact, both out of turn 3 and in the change of direction of turns 6-7, as well as out of turns 11 and 15, and he even manages not to lift his foot at turn 12 unlike his teammate. However, Sainz has more speed in turns 4, 10 and 11 showing, beyond stability, a good level of downforce despite the rear wing in that configuration. One of the hypotheses is that the comparative test was not only on the rear wing but also on the car set-up and in particular on the heights from the ground. Sainz's near miss clearly occurred due to a particularly aggressive approach on the SF-23 number 55, brought onto the track with evidently extremely low ground clearance. The low ground clearance increases the downforce generated by the car body, but requires greater stiffness of the suspension unit and makes the car more complicated to drive and manage. The problem that Maranello's engineers are trying to solve for now appears to be management of the front axle, with a particularly delicate aerodynamic balance to find. The heavily loaded rear wing has shown a delicate structural instability, and raises the question that it tends to shift the load to the rear in a way that is not easily corrected. It therefore seems likely that the Ferrari approach will be to use the rear wing seen in testing, trying to be very aggressive on the ground clearance front to compensate for the overall level of downforce. In this sense, the second free practice session will provide almost definitive indications on the matter. See also The level of the others On the other teams we have so far seen confirmation of what was found in the tests: Red Bull continues to show a high level of excellence, even if with a car that is not immediately easy to drive, especially for Verstappen, Mercedes struggling with grip, especially on the compounds soft and Aston Martin nearby. In the long run mini-simulation we see Verstappen always constant and with limited degradation, as well as Sainz, even if the Spaniard evidently had much more fuel (lapsing 2 seconds slower) and the medium compound. Impossible to evaluate the balance of power for the moment, we are waiting for the second session to draw some more conclusions. FP | Federico Albano ALL RIGHTS RESERVED #PL1 #Ferrari #works #rear #wing #ground #clearance #FormulaPassion.it