With only a couple of days remaining before the first day of pre-season testing at the Bahrain International Circuit, Scuderia Ferrari have become the final team on the grid to reveal their car and livery for 2021 following launch of their race-suits on 26 February.
The Maranello based team will be hoping that this new car marks the beginning of new chapter for the team, with Ferrari suffering their worst year in 2020 for 40 years.
Enrico Cardile, Head of Chassis revealed that the team decided, even before the development work started, which part of the car they were going to focus on. After the 2020 struggles not only with power, but with a loose rear end, Cardile and his department have been using their development tokens on that area.
“When we began the SF21 project, our first task was to identify which area of the car we should focus on in order to achieve a radical change. We opted for the rear end, designing a new gearbox and new suspension system. This, in addition to the efforts of our power unit colleagues has led to a much tighter rear end.”
On top of this the team developed parts of the radiator, but their main aims over the winter have been to recover the downforce lost through the regulation changes to the floor for 2021 and reducing as much drag as possible on the car.
“We also looked at the cooling system, increasing the effectiveness of the central radiator and designed the body with more downwashing. Aerodynamics was one of the areas affected by the regulation changes aimed at reducing the ability to generate vertical load, in order not to put too great a strain on the tyres. That’s why, as we began developing the car’s aerodynamics, we set ourselves two goals: recovering more aerodynamic downforce than was lost through the regulations and reducing drag.”
With only a limited amount of development tokens available to all team’s, Ferrari have still managed to develop an impressive number of parts on the car but understandably some parts of the car have remained the same with the chassis of the car and suspension carrying over from the SF1000.
“Because of the regulations, less drastic changes were possible at the front end of the car. So, we developed a new front wing which works in conjunction with a new concept nose, but the chassis itself and the suspension is off last year’s SF1000.”
