Can Ferrari's all-new chariot challenge for 2024's F1 honours?

Resplendent in red. After last week's plethora of carbon-heavy liveries suggested a staid approach to designing around the weight limit, Aston Martin and Ferrari have kicked off the Formula 1 launch season's second week in style.

"With the SF-24 we wanted to create a completely new platform and in fact, every area of the car has been redesigned," Ferrari's technical director Enrico Cardile noted, "even if our starting point was the development direction we adopted last year and which saw us take a leap forward in terms of competitiveness in the final part of the season."

Having been quick to drop its boxy, bath-tub sidepods last season, Ferrari was restricted in the manner that it could divert to a downwashing configuration by its existing infrastructure. With an entirely new car, this could be pursued without such limitations and the Scuderia has gone all-in on the prevailing trends of design. But rather than simply copy the Red Bull philosophy and be done with it, it has added its own twists that it hopes will elevate it above the championship winners.

A wider nose sets off the changes at the front, although Ferrari had already been able to implement a shorter crash structure last season; the spoon-shaped central section of the front wing mainplane allows the opportunity to bring airflow under the nose to limit any stagnation here. The front wing treatment differs to last season, as the outwashing brackets appear to have been removed; whether these will appear again is unknown, but it suggests that the team found them superfluous in its new development.

The team has stuck to its guns with the push-rod front suspension and pull-rod rear elements, perhaps having felt that the lower packaging of the rear springs did not produce deleterious effects on the floor. There are minor changes to the aerodynamic shrouding around the suspension elements at the front, with the placement of the rear wishbone legs low to assist with imbuing the right axial movement at the front.

It's in the sidepod packaging where the most obvious change is seen, made possible by Ferrari moving the lowest side impact spar further down. On the SF-23, this was housed within the sidepod which produced its characteristic bulge in the outer surface, but this has been incorporated into the floor body to allow the team to open up the undercut below the inlet.

The changes on the SF-24 are most apparent in the sidepod packaging

Photo by: Ferrari

This is, like many of the inlet geometries seen over previous launches, undoubtedly influenced by the protruding lower lip design first produced by Red Bull. But of curiosity is a smaller inlet positioned below this lip: this is a narrow vertical slot that allows the aerodynamicists to keep the other inlets as small as possible to produce the requisite cooling.

This builds into Ferrari's undercut which, like the Aston Martin revealed on Monday, leaves much of the sidepod's lower surface exposed. Here, the air is channelled into a neat sweep around the sidepods that should keep the distance it has to travel down, limiting the effects of separation due to air particles encountering friction.

PLUS: How Aston Martin has evolved its F1 concept for 2024

Alongside the changes to the internal infrastructure, Ferrari has also produced a top surface channel to enhance the passage of airflow to the top of the floor. This builds into a tightly sculpted rear end - a classic Coke bottle section prevalent in this area that should assist the floor performance and supply cleaner air to the beam wing.

There are little details around the SF-24 that pique further curiosity, particularly around the aero devices positioned around the cockpit

To compensate, the cooling outlet surrounding the exhaust tailpipe have been widened slightly to form the in-vogue cannon-like bodywork treatment around the engine cover. Gill-like cooling vents in the centre of these 'cannons' embellish the expulsion of excess heat from within the car. Further inspiration from 2023's technical trends includes exposing the tips of the rear wing's upper element, with a small support at the front corners to ensure it remains within the bounds of legality.

But there are little details around the SF-24 that pique further curiosity, particularly around the aero devices positioned around the cockpit. For the first time since 2019, the team has opted for the removal of the horn-like flow conditioners situated either side of the air intake. It retains the triangular intake shape, with a small size design to lessen the impact of any low-energy air flowing towards the rear wing; instead, the aerodynamicists have got creative with the small bounding boxes permitting aerodynamic tools around the cockpit sides.

At the halo attachment points either side of the cockpit, Ferrari has added some aero tools to perhaps condition and clean up the flow patterns around the cockpit. A small vane links the halo and the sidepod, with a smaller scoop embedded within it that funnels air aft of the halo's rear mounting. Without the benefit of CFD tools to verify the effect, we're just speculating (as, admittedly, we do most of the time as we wait for a kindly benefactor to push an activation code and slightly more powerful computer our way), but this could be an effort to energise airflow and help to maintain a trimmed boundary layer.

Aero tools added to halo attachment points either side of the cockpit show sophistication

Photo by: Ferrari

As there are safety devices in this area that are not particularly conducive to desirable airflow patterns, keeping the boundary layer well managed limits the effect of separation-induced turbulence, which is ultimately something that produces drag. Ferrari has targeted efficiency with its 2024 package, and pockets of power-sapping drag would be anathema to this philosophy. But that's just a guess, and we'd welcome a real aerodynamicist's input here!

Although the car looks very pretty, looks don't decide world titles: on-track performance does. Ferrari managed to grind out one race win over 2023, but only on a day when Red Bull had barely turned up - and this isn't good enough for a team hoping to bring its title dry spell to an end. Improvements over 2023 introduced more predictability into the SF-23 package, and Ferrari will strive for further progress in this area.

“We have taken on board what the drivers told us and turned those ideas into engineering reality, with the aim of giving them a car that’s easier to drive and therefore easier to get the most out of and push it to its limits," Cardile explained.

“We did not set ourselves any design constraints other than that of delivering a strong and honest racing car, which can reproduce on the race track what we have seen in the wind tunnel.”

Early impressions from the simulator, per Charles Leclerc, suggest that Ferrari has made that degree of progress. The Monegasque found that the SF-23 needed to be precariously balanced on the edge of adhesion to get performance out of it; this yielded a clutch of poles, but equally resulted in wall-bothering antics when the car tipped over the cliff-face, such as his Miami shunt in Q3.

"The SF-24 ought to be less sensitive and easier to drive and for us drivers that’s what you need in order to do well," he explained. "I expect the car to be a step forward in several areas and from the impression I formed in the simulator I think we’re where we want to be."

If that's how Ferrari has managed to cut it with its new car, then it could be a somewhat exciting time for those in the F1 circus enrobed in scarlet. Early promise in 2022 subsided when Red Bull got its act together, while 2023's car was not good enough to mount a consistent challenge to Milton Keynes' finest.

If 2024 can be the year that it finally enjoys a rich run of form, then it has timed its revival well - particularly with the arrival of a certain seven-time champion scheduled for 2025. No pressure, then.

The SF-24 livery pays homage to Ferrari's success at Le Mans with the 499P in 2023 - can its F1 arm replicate that in 2024?

Photo by: Ferrari