Ferrari has brought an upgraded floor to Formula 1’s Italian Grand Prix in a bid to help cure the bouncing problems that have held the team back in recent races.
A new floor design that arrived at the Spanish Grand Prix triggered a difficult spell for the Maranello-based squad as it triggered a return of high-speed bouncing.
An evolution of that concept was delivered in Hungary and the further changes brought to Monza should, the Scuderia hopes, help it finally start making some progress again.
Ferrari performance engineer Jock Clear said that the key to stopping bouncing was in controlling the final millimetre of movement when the car is sucked down close to the track as it generates more and more downforce – a “trap” that many teams have fallen into.
“In the past, cars would always bounce off the ground,” he said. “But the plank was there, plus we weren’t relying on that final bit of ground effect that this generation of cars are relying on. So, it would bounce off the ground but the aero was never that critical.
“These cars have ground effect, and have had for the last couple of years. That simply means that when the car does touch the ground, [the downforce] all disappears. So, you really have to be careful how aggressive that downforce is in those last couple of millimetres.
“It’s part of this genre of car, and it is something that is a trap that we’ve fallen into earlier in this season. But we’re modelling it better now. We’re much more confident that we are now going to be able to produce floors that we don’t find a problem [with] when we actually put them on the real car.”
What is new on the Ferrari at Monza
As well as the new floor, Ferrari has delivered a host of changes to its SF-24, including front and rear wings and sidepod tweaks.
The new low-downforce rear wing is an all-new design, with the team having simply used the same specification last season as it did in 2022.
The design now fits into the same family as the rest of the wings in its suite of solutions, with just one centrally mounted support pillar.
As with its other downforce variants, the wing is supported at the crash structure end with a semi-circular structure that wraps around the exhaust.
The swan neck-style connection at the top of the pylon still connects to the DRS pod, but rather than creating an arch above the mainplane, it now merges with it to provide additional support.
Ferrari SF-23 rear wing
Photo by: Giorgio…
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