The Ferrari team unveiled the SF-23, the 2023 car, and the presentation venue was the factory test track in Fiorano, so anyone who followed what happened had the chance to see the car not only in photos, but also “live” in real life.
After Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz completed the opening laps on the new car, Mark Hughes, technical expert from the championship’s official website, shared his first impressions of today’s event.
Last year Ferrari had a car fast enough to take 11 pole positions, two more than Red Bull Racing. It probably should come as no surprise that the new SF-23 bears a strong resemblance to last year’s F1-75.
The main obstacle that prevented Ferrari from challenging for the title last season was technical problems with the power plant. After the double derailment in Baku, the team’s mechanics had to reconfigure the engines, which reduced their power slightly, and the team embarked on a long-term project to improve the reliability of the ERS system and related components.
Over the winter, this work was completed and it is now believed that the Italian power plants can withstand more aggressive modes of operation. That’s how it was at the very beginning of last season, when Ferrari’s engines were at their most efficient.
It must be Maranello’s hope that these measures, combined with the changes to the chassis, will be enough to withstand Red Bull longer than 2022.
According to Enrico Cardile, head of the chassis department, the new car is on the one hand an evolution of last year’s F1-75, on the other hand significant changes have been made to the design to improve the level of downforce and balance. Among other things, the suspension was updated, especially the front, and a new front wing appeared on the SF-23. Overall, the car’s nose and body can be considered a more aggressive version of what Ferrari had last year.
It seems that the contours of the new car have become a bit slimmer and more taut, partly due to the chamfered front corners of the side pontoons, which indicates a change in the location of the radiators. However, we have seen similar solutions on most of the new machines from other teams.
As with last year’s car, the tops of the side pontoons are slightly concave to direct airflow more efficiently to the secondary rear wing mounted below the main wing. But in redesigning the cooling system, Ferrari did not follow Red Bull’s lead and reproduced their approach. Instead, Maranello opted to leave numerous hatches on the car’s body in the area where the side pontoons and engine housing connect.
The nose appears a bit flatter and the front wing, unveiled today, shows dividing lines between the planes, rotated so that they should promote the formation of vortices that help speed up the flow that feeds into the Venturi tunnels that start under side pontoons.
Last year the Mercedes team used a similar solution in Austin and Mexico City, but the FIA decided that it did not meet the technical regulations, as the main function of such separators is still not to make the wing structure more durable , but to increase aerodynamic efficiency.
Let’s see if Ferrari managed to interpret the same idea in a different way, so that the federation’s experts considered such a decision legal.
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
