Ferrari is making big changes to their SF-24 car to try to compete better with Red Bull and McLaren.
One big change is to the sidepod and engine cover bodywork. Ferrari used to have what’s called an underbite sidepod inlet, but now they’ve switched to an overbite design, similar to what Red Bull uses. However, Ferrari’s inlet is a bit bigger than Red Bull’s.
They’ve also merged the vertical bypass duct next to the chassis with the main inlet to make one bigger inlet. This is like what Alpine and Mercedes did this year.
Because of these changes, they had to get rid of the outlet next to the rear leg of the halo and change the winglet there.
They’ve also made changes to the wing mirror stalk to help control the airflow over the sidepod.
The shape of the sidepod’s bodywork has been changed too. It has a bigger undercut now, which allowed Ferrari to reshape the sidepod’s flank and adjust its waistline cut.
All these changes outside mean they had to change things inside the car too. They had to move or completely redesign things like the radiators, coolers, and other parts of the power unit to fit everything in.
Because of these big changes, Ferrari decided to introduce the whole update package at Imola instead of doing it bit by bit in China and Miami. This way, they have more time to understand how the changes affect the car.
This should help Ferrari do better in the rest of the season if the new parts work as expected.
