Ferrari has explained how the wind tunnel correlation for the team's 2025 Formula 1 single-seater was behind its decision to test a revised floor at the Las Vegas Grand Prix.
The Italian marque had insisted no updates would arrive to boost the team's Constructors' Championship hopes, where they are 36 points behind McLaren.
However, Ferrari made its track debut yesterday with a modified flat bottom during F1's third visit to the United States this season, which was used on Carlos Sainz's SF-24 in the first test session .
But the flat bottom was removed before Libre 2 and was not used again this weekend, as Ferrari performance engineer Jock Clear confirmed it was an experimental part, whatever or its performance.
“This test was done with the aim of properly correlating the wind tunnel. Of course, this has implications for 2025, because it is the tool on which we develop everything, but it is really a correlation process, we We weren't expecting any performance from this piece.”
“We've been pretty open in actually publicizing the fact that we installed this flat bottom. But I think you'll probably find that teams do it all the time. Obviously, a flat bottom is an important piece, and in fact, you have to commit, because it’s also an expensive part.”
“So it's not the kind of thing you're going to do every week, but there are things on the car that are developments and that correlate to things that are on the car every week.
“You know, little sensors and little fins on the front brake ducts and things like that.”
“The fact that we went to the effort to put a floor in here is because we had an important correlation to make, and we certainly think that if it gives us the information that we want, then yes, it's worth it to do it. That's why we do it.”
Clear rejected the idea that choosing to try the change on a street track rather than a conventional circuit would limit the data Ferrari would be able to obtain.
“No, you could run this thing on the main straight at Monza and learn just as much. You can't test every week, so we ran it on the main straight at Las Vegas.”
The reason Ferrari chose Las Vegas over circuits like Qatar or Abu Dhabi came from the engineers' desire not to waste valuable development time.
“We would have to go back to the thoughts of what the people who are developing in the tunnel decide to do. It's just a question of timing, honestly. If you ask the people in the tunnel if they can wait two weeks before doing the correlation , they'll say, 'No, we want it now'.”
“So they probably decided they wanted this correlation two weeks ago, and saying, 'OK, you can have it in a month' didn't sound as good as 'you can have it in two weeks.' .”
“So that's what they asked us to do. Development has an x-axis, which is time, and development is constant.”
“But your performance relative to others depends on the x-axis, which is time. So we're always going to do things as fast as possible, basically.”
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