Ferrari F1-75 – The most Beautiful car we’ve seen so far

Ferrari has presented the new F1-75 for the 2022 Formula 1 season. The new car of Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc has a slightly different livery than in recent years, but the red does of course return.

I was looking forward to what Ferrari was going to bring to the show, but based on what we’ve been shown so far I’m a bit disappointed. I always talk about the car being one entity from front to rear, the performance comes from the sum of all the bits working together. But I don’t see that in this car.

Yes, there will be changes but it doesn’t look like a potentially race-winning car. Hopefully, I will be proved wrong – and that’s something that has happened on many occasions!

But if this car concept is the real deal, it means everyone else has headed down the wrong avenue and I don’t believe that is likely.

Ferrari F1-75 – Sidepod leading edge plain and side view

This is where the Ferrari all gets a bit different. During the launch, Binotto was like a kid with a new toy about this area, so he seems very proud of what Ferrari has achieved. But I’m not so sure about it.

The radiator inlet makes sense. It is as high as possible, it uses width as opposed to depth to get the opening size Ferrari requires for the cooling, and, as can be seen from the size of the rollover bar inlet, it is doing most of its cooling through the sidepod inlets.

Ferrari has also incorporated louvres in the top surface of the sidepod. This is similar to Aston Martin but the top surface of the sidepod is a very different concept.

It has a ‘valley’ dropping down from the top surface of the front inlet and then effectively flicks out again at the forward leg of the top rear wishbone.

The regulations define that for this section of the bodywork, you must only use a radius of something like 50mm or larger. This is why there is such a large radius on this top outer corner.

But I’m not sure why you would want to sweep it down into this valley. If the louvres were positioned in the bottom of this valley it might just contain that low-energy airflow but they are positioned on the engine cover sides. So this undercut on the top surface will compromise the cooling package underneath the body surfaces as it takes up space. It looks like the radiator is rectangular shaped starting at the highest point at the front of the sidepod and going down to the floor further rearward.

With this very aggressive undercut on the front corner of the leading edge of the sidepod creating a very bluff face and then coming to nothing where the sidepod goes into its very boxy shape, it appears to me that there were two design teams working flat out on each end of the car! And unfortunately, when it was all meant to meet up properly, it didn’t.

Ferrari could be trying to get this front area of the floor to work as an extra little diffuser, scavenging airflow out from under that front corner of the underfloor, but as of yet, there is nothing I can see on the floor to assist with this. It will also generate outwash, which is something the rulemakers didn’t want. It simply appears to be a large, square sidepod with very little undercut leading into the Coke bottle area.

The nose

The nose is a bit more like the Williams in that the top surface has more curvature than some of the others.

This will allow the airflow going over that area to go around the sides of the nose more easily. It has the now-common raised undersurface. The cross-section at the front of the front tyres is probably as small as possible while still being able to pass the mandatory frontal crash test.

This is very different from the Aston Martin or the McLaren approach, both of which have a continuous slot gap between the first and second elements. Ferrari does not.

To reduce the area of stagnation where the airflow hits the front of the nose and doesn’t know where to go, Ferrari has gone for a pointy design. The front element has a large spoon section in the middle, which is quite wide and also lower.

This is about trying to make this spoon area work to produce front downforce. The front two elements mount the front wing to the nose and the third and fourth elements run into the sides of the nose.

The whole concept is quite heavily loaded inboard with the outer sections of all of the elements dropping off fairly quickly to connect up to the lower edge of the front wing endplate. As required by the regulations, each of the elements and slot gaps curve into the lower part of the endplates.

The endplates have the customary ski ramp on the outer surface. This helps with managing the tyre squirt and the negative effect that could have on the performance of the front wing.

It is only the outer two thirds of the fourth element that appears to be adjustable; even the last short section before it that connects to the endplates is fixed. Normally with a highly-loaded inboard section, if you vary the angle of the inner section of the fourth element it has a detrimental effect on the airflow further downstream. So Ferrari might just be boxed in that little bit with how much front downforce it can produce.

Ferrari F1-75 Ferrari F1-75

Read more : Ferrari supports FIA restructure “position of Michael Masi”

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