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Ferrari knew the British Grand Prix would be tough given that Silverstone is the circuit Carlos Sainz has dubbed the “King of High Speed”.
But more than just exposing a weakness in the fast stuff in terms of performance, the fact that Ferrari has reverted to the old floor and chassis specifications it used before last month’s Barcelona upgrade shows just how big the recoil problem is with its 2024 Formula 1 car.
Sainz qualified seventh, half a second behind George Russell’s pole position, while Charles Leclerc failed to secure a place in Q3 in 11th. Although Sainz admitted “we didn’t make the most of everything” as the final lap of Q3 was compromised by a collision with Oscar Piastri and Fernando Alonso, and Leclerc complained of oversteer due to his left front tyre going out the window, a perfect qualifying session was not going to change the picture. Ferrari were fourth.
The back-to-back tests in Friday practice, with Leclerc using the latest spec and Sainz using the previously Ferrari-run configuration, were not just about determining which was best for Silverstone. Leclerc believes this will give Ferrari the insight it needs to address the excessive roll the car suffers from in high-speed corners.
“We have lost some performance since Monaco, actually, and we are looking at that; that is also why we have done all these tests,” says Leclerc. “We have come to the conclusion that it was right to come back this week mostly because of the rebound and we will make the right decision for the future very soon.
“What we did yesterday was very helpful in helping us make the right decision moving forward.”
The update package is likely to return to Hungary in a couple of weeks, although Ferrari has not committed to that or what modifications may or may not be required.
Attempts were made to improve the situation at Silverstone, with Leclerc using a slightly firmer surface in the hope that this would eliminate his problems. Given that the package seems to work as expected at lower speeds, there is an increase in downforce and drag from the updated package, so if the benefits can be retained and the bounce eliminated, there is theoretically performance. The problem is that this is easier said than done.
This is doubly true for Ferrari, where the new package didn’t cause the rebound problem so much as it exacerbated it. During qualifying at Silverstone, there were moments where the Ferrari was clearly jumping. Leclerc describes the rebound as “a little bit better” with the specification running in qualifying. Sainz says it’s been a problem all season.
“Since the beginning of the year, we have had some setbacks, so that is still a fundamental weakness,” says Sainz. “But the new one was clearly worse than the old one at Silverstone.”
The switch to the old package also sacrificed some performance as it was intended to make the car more predictable. “We know it’s not faster, but it’s more drivable,” says Sainz. Watching Leclerc in action on Friday backed up that statement emphatically.
With this generation of cars, adding downforce is relatively easy: just bring the floor closer to the ground. Mercedes, McLaren and Red Bull excel in this area and don’t have the serious sway problems that Ferrari does. Living with this problem is not an option as it also affects lap times and sometimes puts even more stress on the tyres.
It’s never a good thing for a team to backtrack on an update, but this is particularly concerning for Ferrari. After all, the team described the Spanish GP update as building on the previous update introduced at Imola rather than any real change in direction. Given that the package exacerbated the problem rather than created it, the fix may not be straightforward or quick.
Gary Anderson’s Viewpoint
Since the Monaco triumph, Ferrari has struggled with the balance between low and high speeds. It has sought to improve performance at low speeds, which seems unnecessary when you look at the pace in Monaco. As a result, it has introduced more rebound. This was something Ferrari was always on the verge of doing even before these developments.
The Barcelona upgrade that was removed from the car included seven items, but we can ignore the track-specific rear wing and modified halo cover when it comes to this issue. But the most significant changes were to the floor and bodywork. In Ferrari’s Barcelona presentation to the FIA, this is what they included:
Coke/engine cover
Main reason: Performance – Flow conditioning
Geometric change: increased sidewall/undermined coke
How it works: The new bodywork features a redesigned underbody that improves flow quality over the edge of the floor and toward the rear of the vehicle.
floor walls
Main reason: Performance – Flow conditioning
Geometric change: redistribution of the curvatures of the floor walls
How it works: The goal of redistributing the front floor fence loads was to improve the quality of the flow delivered to the rear floor/diffuser.
floor body
Main reason: Performance – Flow conditioning
Architectural change: lowering the front floor ceiling
How it works: Works in conjunction with the updated front floor rail arrangements, to improve the quality of flow towards the rear of the vehicle.
floor edge
Main reason: Performance – Local load
Geometric change: Increased size of the rear floor edge
How it works: This simple engineering update is an improvement around the improved flow energy coming from the source, and returning local load gains with controlled vortex release in the diffuser.
publisher
Main causes: Performance – Local load
Engineering change: redesign of the diffuser/boat/widening of the keel
How it works: By taking advantage of higher order flow structures, expanding the diffuser, along with optimizing the boat and transom sizes, this allowed for more local load gains to be extracted.
These changes boil down to more downforce from under the car’s floor. As Ferrari acknowledges, this has helped the car in slow corners. This is where ride height is at its highest, and is crucial to overall lap time as it’s the slow corners where you spend most of your time.
However, you have to manage the increased downforce under the floor at high speed when the car is at a low ride height. If you don’t, it leads to bounce – or in “old-fashioned” terms, skidding.
As Ferrari noted in its announcement, the main developments are under the floor and diffuser, so it’s impossible to see any of that from these side images. But when you lower the leading edge or throat area under the floor, which Ferrari says it has done, it means there’s less mass flow into that area.
Increasing the diffuser’s suction power means that the airflow down the floor throat has to move faster to get from A (intake) to B (exit). By requiring this flow to do this, it will suffer more from separation problems.
Some areas of the underfloor will be more dangerous than others, and these are the areas you need to pay attention to. The separation area may be very small at first, but it can grow quickly. I always liken it to a light switch versus a dimmer switch. If it is too diffuse, the car will start to move vertically, which can easily make the problem worse.
Ferrari seems to believe the problem is worse when the car is subjected to lateral load in fast corners, so they have strengthened the floor structure for the high-speed corners at Silverstone. But this has not solved the problem.
One thing you may experience is a lift in the car when it is under a lateral load. Depending on the suspension geometry, the lateral forces can lift the car up or down. It is similar to preventing dive, preventing lift, or preventing squatting when the car is subjected to longitudinal forces from braking or acceleration.
It’s impossible to say how much of an impact this system might have without going through the actual suspension geometry in detail and trying to understand its lift characteristics, but if I were at Ferrari, I’d certainly be keeping a close eye on this system.
After running the Spanish floor/chassis package and the old specification during Friday practice, Ferrari decided to backtrack and put both Leclerc and Sainz on the old configuration for the rest of the weekend. This is always difficult, because when you backtrack you don’t progress and Ferrari probably paid the price for that as the weather was wet in FP3. This meant there was no time to get the best out of the revised specification in preparation for qualifying.
You can see some signs of engine bounce even in older spec cars, which means this is a serious underlying problem. It may take some steps back to fully understand and fix it.
As I always say, most problems are easy to fix, but you have to understand them first. Random improvements won’t get you anywhere, and you don’t always need to believe you’re moving forward. Give the driver a steady, confident push and it will get you farther than most improvements.
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