How Ferrari has managed to keep proving Leclerc wrong

After downplaying every talk of repeated P1 starting performance like he’d done in Monaco at the last event in Baku, he did just that.

“I felt pretty stupid saying that,” he smiled. “It was really a big surprise in Baku to be as competitive as we were, at least in qualifying.

“In the race it was a little bit back to what we expected, but I feel like it is [in France] It’s going to be a bit more of a normal weekend on a normal track, not a city track, and on a track like this where there are a lot more medium-speed corners where we usually struggle a little more.

“I expect things to be a bit more like the Baku race. But hopefully I’m wrong because I’ve been to Baku and we’re a lot faster than we thought. “

But while Ferrari may not be as competitive as it would like it to be, there is no doubt that the Maranello squad has made more impressive profits with their F1 car in 2021 than many predicted after a challenging campaign last year.

So how did it do that?

It’s important to first look at what went wrong in 2020 when everything was left at sea.

After Ferrari originally developed the SF1000 to add downforce to a design concept at rocket-pace on the straights, Ferrari’s “agreement” with the FIA ​​on powertrain performance seriously affected last year’s car.

The powertrain was castrated due to a deluge of technical guidelines from the governing body. The car then turned out to be too sluggish to overcome the reduced power, and straight-ahead travel was lacking. Forced to produce a derivative of last year’s car, Ferrari was therefore faced with the challenge of making progress, but at least it knew where the problem areas were.

Charles Leclerc, Ferrari SF1000

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

Ferrari regained its lead in slow corners. The SF21 drives curbs with ease, and a modest series of updates has continued the team’s good work to deliver an ongoing assault on third place in the Formula 1 Constructors’ Championship.

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One of the biggest visual changes compared to the recent line of Ferrari cars was the front. Many teams have moved away from the thumb tip crash structure in recent years and created a more visually appealing nose design.

McLaren, Renault / Alpine and AlphaTauri, together with Aston Martin and Alfa Romeo, have switched to a thinner geometry that encloses the airflow and enables a cleaner transition to the floor area. But Ferrari, which had spent its off-season development brands on redesigning the rear of the car, had to settle for redesigning the bow fairing instead to create a smoother transition to the nose cone.

Ferrari’s design is a bit halfway there in that regard, but still includes a pair of slits on either side of the nose to draw a clean flow of air under the front end and work with the multitude of fins that lead to the bargeboards . Ferrari also added a quartet of fins at the top of the nose to direct airflow down towards the undercut of the side pods.

Tokens issued at the stern include a redesigned gear and suspension package to create a tapered design to open up the bottom and give the team more options to set the correct pressure differential between the top and bottom of the To generate soil. With the zoning plan changed for 2021 to limit downforce, Ferrari has made reclaiming this one of its priorities. To support this, the body was also reconfigured, with the side pods now creating a distinct downwash effect that fits into the “Coke bottle” channel at the rear.

Charles Leclerc, Ferrari SF21

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

At the beginning of the 2021 season there was the opportunity to look at the other teams’ interpretations of the new rules and to evaluate their merits. During the three-day test in Bahrain, the entire range of soil solutions was broken, with the “Z-soil” solution being cut open. Ferrari, which may have developed its own conical design in the spirit of the rules, put its own version of the Z-floor into operation in Imola in April. It was never driven at the Italian venue but was installed for the Portuguese Grand Prix the following month after a copy was made for each driver.

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Previously, Ferrari had experimented with ribs on the back of the floor to replace the slots previously used to let air flow out, creating a kind of seal for clean air under the car. These were paired with a small winglet mounted in front of the rear tires between those fins and a rib farther in, apparently to try to cut off any turbulence created by the rotating wheels. In addition, a small cluster of fins has been placed on top of the diffuser to try to seal it off even further.

But Ferrari’s final Z-floor design seemed to reduce the need for some of the fins in the back of the floor, allowing the team to edit the airflow earlier and seal the floor with the additional exposed corner of the new design. At the start of the season, Ferrari had three washout fins about three-quarters of the floor down, but these were removed with the introduction of the new floor. The Z-bottom also has a fin along the top that helps reinforce and direct the position of the vortex created.

Ferrari later added the cluster of teeth at the rear corner of the floor, but reduced their chord length to compress more and increase the placement of the airflow around the rear wheel. The 2021 specification soils were fertile ground for development as teams had to recognize their limits and work around them, and Ferrari has followed suit.

Carlos Sainz Jr., Ferrari SF21

Photo by: Charles Coates / Motorsport Images

This willingness to make developments and not simply give up the SF1000 / SF21 concept has helped Ferrari move to the top of the midfield. But it also had the chance to develop the powerplant that bothered it last season by introducing redesigned pistons and a new cylinder head to improve the efficiency of the combustion process. Ferrari also made minor changes to improve the hybrid components on board and gain more power.

While the Ferrari package isn’t the fastest on the grid in terms of straight-line performance, power delivery played well with the car’s sag in the bumpier sections of the road, resulting in an excellent performance in both Monaco and Baku.

In the racing trim, the SF21 seems to wrest a little more life from the tire compared to its competitors on the grid, which gives the team less flexibility in terms of racing strategy.

But Ferrari’s developments and excellent qualifying performances lately seem to point to a distant chance for a big result this year – if the stars are spot on for Leclerc or Carlos Sainz Jr.