The most awaited top team for this tenth weekend of the season is certainly Ferrari. The Scuderia has declared six performance updates designed to increase the performance of the SF-24. “The package we’ve introduced here is a continuation of what we’ve been doing over the last year – which is trying to make the car a little more benign and easier for the driver,” Jock Clear informed some of the press, including Formu1a.uno.
Thanks to huge effort in the factory, Ferrari managed to bring three new floors to Spain (the last of which arrived on Friday morning). This means there will be no concerns about spare parts.
Comparative tests will be carried out this Friday. In FP1, Carlos Sainz was able to test the new surface, while Leclerc used the previous specification.
“It is useful to make comparisons even if it is very difficult to fully compare them because the differences are not very large,” Jock Clear explained.
“You don’t have enough laps, the same conditions. But what we want to look for are any warning signs that tell us that on the track, we are not seeing what you thought the new parts were supposed to give.”
CLEAR CONFIRMS: Ferrari upgrades were not initially planned for Spain
At the start of this tenth weekend we told you in various ways how a sort of race against time was underway in Maranello to anticipate the new fund at Montmelo but initially scheduled for the Silverstone GP. Anticipating the new bottom also meant anticipating the new sidepods, which are an adaptation to the fluid dynamic demands of what is new in the lower part of the SF-24.
“This package was not planned for Spain but Barcelona is a fantastic circuit to evaluate the car. So if you can bring a package here, you will try to do everything to do it,” confirmed Jock Clear.
“We have so much experience here at Montmelo, which will allow us to do a good analysis of the new features and the entire package.”
There is plenty of motivation at Maranello. In many ways, the quality of work done in the factory will decide the outcome at the front. Spain is a track that will confirm the effectiveness of Ferrari’s updates.
“We anticipated the new package also because we are all very close. And if you manage to bring it a race earlier, the improvements are as if they were doubled.
“Because it is always a relative battle, also based on what the others do. And if we can get an update before the other teams, then we have an advantage for that race,” said the British Ferrari engineer.
It must also be noted that, after this weekend, the Scuderia must optimise their upgrades.
CLEAR: “THE NEW PACKAGE IS NOT A REACTION TO SOMETHING THAT WAS WRONG”
The British engineer then went into more detail about what the Maranello team expects in chronometric terms.
“This update is similar in terms of performance increases compared to the one in Imola. Even though it is more incremental than the first package, it offers the same amount of performance,” stated Clear. He made it clear the improvements brought to Spain were not a reaction to any issues with the Imola package.
“The new features are not a reaction to something which didn’t go well in Imola but a development we made in parallel.
“We didn’t need to wait to see how the Imola package worked on the track. Because we knew what it would give us. So, in parallel, we continued the development of the Ferrari SF-24. And the next step is what you are seeing on the track today.”
This second update package, as stated by Charles Leclerc, is not meant to correct the SF-24’s fundamental issues. Rather, the goal of this update, as anticipated last week by Formu1a.uno, is to increase downforce and efficiency.
The aim is to unlock pure performance and downforce – rather than any specific area. “This one from Spain is an incremental update, where we added a little more downforce and took away a little drag, making the package slightly more efficient,” Jock Clear explained. He went into further detail:
“The new update has sidepods that are an even more extreme version of the Imola one in terms of undercut.
“We worked on some areas already updated with the first package. Such as the edge of the floor, the (low) part in front of the rear tyres and what powers the expansion of the diffuser in the rear. But also on areas that we didn’t have yet updated. This is because the two updates were designed to complement each other.”
