Ferrari’s F1 upgrades are all about “tilting the map”

But the current generation of ground-effect cars are trickier beasts to make fast, and the challenge involves nailing the right compromise between high-speed and low-speed performance.

Throw on top of that the desire to make sure that the car is not too peaky and that drivers have confidence in it so that they are able to take it to the limit without fear of going over it and spinning out.

Teams up and down the grid have found that their car ends up performing better in certain profiles of corners, with McLaren, for example, having been notably quick in high-speed corners, while Haas excels in the low-speed stuff.

For Ferrari, its own brilliance in high-speed corners this year has come with it feeling it needed to do better at the other end of the spectrum.

So, while more downforce is always a key element of any change, the driving force for Maranello’s update overhaul at Imola is actually about levelling out the performance profile over a range of corners.

As Ferrari’s senior performance engineer Jock Clear explained: “Obviously you can see the changes, but we know that they are happening in key areas – around the floor, around about the rear tyres, underneath the rear wing, all of that sort of thing.

“But honestly, it’s an organic upgrade. We’ve not changed the direction of the car development, this upgrade is bringing a slight shift in what we call the weighting of the car.

“There’ll be some speeds where it’s delivering more, but at different speeds it’s probably delivering less, so it’s tilting the map a little bit, as we say.”

Clear went on to highlight the importance of delivering a car for its drivers that they could have confidence in – something that was notably absent throughout 2023.

“We’re still pursuing that smaller balance window,” he said. “We’re getting less balance shift through the corner, entry, mid, exit: that generally makes a more consistent car and that is a car that a driver has more confidence in and can carry speed with confidence.

“It’s making the car a bit more benign and we’ve mentioned that a number of times. It’s just a little bit chunkier everywhere on the map.”

Aero consequences

While much of the interest in the Ferrari Imola upgrades has revolved around the most visible changes – like the overbite sidepods – Clear says that actually, the bodywork tweaks are a consequence of stuff happening elsewhere.

“It’s cleaning…