Ferrari gathers around his Emilia Romagna devastated by the flood, while in Maranello the team unites to find solutions to the limits of SF-23. The Prancing Horse shows more awareness of the car’s problems, while the first month of the championship was marked by investigations to figure out where to go and intervene. The Rossa proved to be an aerodynamically efficient car in ideal conditions, respecting what was foreseen by the simulations and underlined by the presidency at the presentation. Performance inconstancy and balancing gaps, however, still prevent the theoretical potential of the project from being realized.
Interconnected problems
Ferrari can rejoice in a car which, depending on its wing configuration, has the potential to achieve good straight-line speeds, even without the Red Bull super-DRS. The slow mileage also remains encouraging, instilling confidence in view of races such as Monaco. For the rest, the Reds have ground ahead of them to make up on Red Bull in various areas. The first is the downforce in medium-high speed corners, a shortcoming that is emphasized above all under race conditions with a full tank of fuel and with the tires far from peak grip. Added to this is the difficulty in digesting curbs and other bumps, due to a compromised mechanical behavior, excessively soft to favor agility in the slow or excessively rigid in search of greater aerodynamic load. In Miami, the SF-23 was seen bouncing around corners, while in qualifying it didn’t forgive Leclerc for his aggressive passage on the curb.
Last but not least, tire management in the race is still far from being optimal, a deficiency which however is also a consequence of the others, considering how everything in the car system is interconnected. The sufferings of Ferrari therefore they are not simply due to its aerodynamic appearance. The mechanics of the suspensions and the overall balance are in fact the other areas on which attention is concentrated in Maranello to get back on track.
Open balance
The balance returns to be at the center of the declarations of the men in red and explains in part Ferrari’s fluctuating performance since the beginning of the championship. The cornering behavior of any car is linked to the position of its neutral point, the ideal point which coincides with the resultant of all the lateral forces released by the tyres. The longitudinal distance between the neutral point and the center of mass determines the car’s tendency to oversteer or understeer and is therefore of major interest to engineers.
The location of the neutral point is affected by both the car’s center of mass and its center of pressure. The former depends on the weight distribution between the front and rear axles, at around 45 and 55% respectively, with a maximum adjustment of ±1% allowed by the regulation. The center of pressure is instead the reference for the resultant of the aerodynamic forces, therefore of the distribution of the load between the front and rear axles. However, both points are unfortunately not constant. In racing conditions for example, in influencing the balance, the fuel load increases the relevance of the center of mass than that of pressure. Conversely, the aerodynamic forces are increasingly significant as the speed increases, becoming four times more intense as the distance is doubled.
If there is too much distance between the two points, the result is an excessively fickle balance that is difficult for the pilot to manage. Thus we have a behavior that at high speeds, an area dominated by aerodynamic forces, is far from that at low mileage where mechanics are the masters. Furthermore, in race conditions, the increase in weight due to the fuel helps to distance the Sunday Ferrari from the balance seen on Saturday. Adjusting the stiffness of the suspension is an option to correct the balance and fill any imbalances. However, the effects are not always consistent between entry reactivity and stability on the road, as well as between the mechanical and aerodynamic effect of the surface, so much so that Leclerc spoke of sudden changes in balance even within the arc of the same curve. Suspension adjustments can also mitigate excessive oversteer or understeer in a specific condition. However, as the type of corner and speed change, the variation of aerodynamic forces generates new imbalances.
The Miami Fund
As always happens in cases of a short blanket, the lack of balance can be masked on those tracks that have types of curves similar to each other. Ferrari’s best weekend in Baku, a track made up of 90% right-angle curves, is a small confirmation of this. Jeddah also has similar corners, mostly fast and wide-ranging. Saudi Arabia had been one of the worst Ferraris of the year, but after the race Vasseur commented that the problem on that occasion wasn’t the balance.
Miami, with its wide variety of wide- and short-radius, high- and low-travel corners, has fully exposed the limits of balancing of the SF-23. At the beginning of the year, Leclerc spoke of a too open balance on last season’s F1-75, a term that returned in the words of Jock Clear when describing the problems of the current Red. In fact, Vasseur has announced a new line of development which focuses both on making the Ferrari a less nervous and sensitive car to external conditions, but which also aims to modify its balance, sacrificing a pinch of absolute load.
The new fund introduced in Miami aims to close the too changeable balance in the transition from high to low speeds. There is reason to believe that too the new rear suspension, rumored for the next European races, goes in this direction. The new bottom, in addition to being geometrically different, will need to work at different heights from the ground and angles of attack to bring the center of pressure closer to that of mass and thus close the balance. However, the overall vision is not lost for both the mechanical and aerodynamic modifications. Reducing sensitivity to wind, asphalt roughness and external conditions remains another priority objective. Furthermore, the SF-23 can only benefit from a suspension group that is able to stabilize the bottom to generate aerodynamic load, without however compromising the absorption of the curbs and the mechanical grip at low speeds. Vasseur and the drivers were clear: the Ferrari 2023 is a car with good potential, with high load peaks reached, however, in an erratic and unpredictable manner. The goal will be to widen the operating window, to allow it to express its maximum potential in all conditions.
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