Ferrari Technical Director Enrico Cardile is confident the team will retain its prowess in Formula 1 qualifying having chasing improvements in race situations with its 2024 car.
The Scuderia unveiled its latest design, the SF-24, last week, which featured a “complete revamp” targeted at being a more compliant car compared to its predecessor.
Ferrari is hopeful its new car will instil confidence in its drivers in all conditions, raising questions about whether it will sacrifice qualifying pace to chase better race results.
“The intention will be to put together the two worlds, keeping having a competitive car in quali, but with a platform more friendly, more exploitable, also during the race with a better performance in race,” Cardile told media including Motorsport Week.
“When we talk about drivability, part of the drivability is how easy is it extract the performance, which can be could be done with a light car, new tyres on one single lap but then becoming trickier and trickier while during the race as the tyres wear, the wind change and so on, so the purpose of increasing the drivability of the car is to have a better performance also in the race.”
Since F1’s latest ground effect aero revolution was introduced in 2022, cars adorned in scarlet red have proved able to extract impressive performance in qualifying conditions.
However, Ferrari has had to endure not converting those numerous pole positions into victories across the previous two campaigns amid the continued dominance of Red Bull.
Ferrari started from pole at 12 races in 2022 but came away with four wins, while last term saw its SF-23 take seven poles but Carlos Sainz in Singapore was its sole success.
Arguably a Safety Car intervention put a stop to Charles Leclerc’s victory pursuit in Las Vegas, but on the whole, the SF-23 was too sensitive a car to be a threat in race conditions.
Cardile’s main focus with the new SF-24 is to rid the imperfections via a more balanced platform but could taming its wild creation prevent Ferrari from turning heads over one lap?
“The drivability content has been achieved with the aerodynamics of the car by shaping the map, giving priority to some aspect of the aerodynamics instead of others,” Cardile added.
“What will happen with this new platform during the season in terms of compromising the quali session for the race session is something we will see when we are on track and now is too early to say if this car will be more competitive in race than in quali like it has been the past cars.”
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