Front suspension biggest change on SF-23 F1 car - Ferrari

While the revised front wing design has inevitably attracted a lot of attention, Ferrari says that the suspension has been changed for both aerodynamic benefits and to provide a greater range of setting adjustments on race weekends.

The SF-23 made its debut at Fiorano on Tuesday when Charles Leclerc gave it its first shakedown laps.

"The 2023 car is an evolution of the one we raced last year," said head of chassis area Enrico Cardile in a video issued by the team. "But in reality, it has all been completely redesigned.

"On the aerodynamic side, our aim was twofold - to increase vertical downforce and to make up for what was lost due to the new era regulations, and then to achieve the balance characteristics we had set ourselves.

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"The suspension has also been completely redesigned, on the one hand to help the aerodynamicists get the results they were looking for, and on the other to increase the range of adjustments possible on the car at the track."

Asked to elaborate on the differences compared to last year's car, Cardile said: "The most obvious changes to the car are definitely in the area of the front suspension where we have moved from a configuration with a high trackrod to one with a low trackrod, driven by the demands of the aerodynamics.

"The front wing is also different, as is the construction of the nose, as the primary element is no longer attached to the nose instead it is floating.

"The bodywork is more a continuation of what was done last year, but it's more extreme."

Ferrari SF-23. detail front wing

Photo by: Ferrari

Like all teams, Ferrari has had to take into account the 15mm change to the floor height that was mandated by the FIA.

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"The new era rules introduced by the FIA to reduce the risk of porpoising on track have led to a net loss of aerodynamic performance," said Cardile.

"Actually quite a substantial loss. In terms of development, our work was not much different to that of previous years.

"We simply had to adapt the car's geometry to suit the new flow shapes that are generated because of the new regulations."

Cardile also made an interesting observation about the impact of the budget cap, noting that far more items were carried over from last year than would have been the case in the past, when teams did not face such restrictions.

That was not the case in the transition from 2021 to 2022 due to the massive rule changes, and teams were obliged to redesign a lot of parts.

"The budget cap has had an undoubted effect on performance," he noted. "Therefore, when it came to designing this year's car, we had to take it into consideration.

"The way we went about it was to decide which areas of the car had little or no added value to the performance of the car, and then try and keep these areas of the car similar to those of the previous one.

"In numerical terms, it means the number of parts carried over in this year's car is double the figure of that of a car built to the previous regulations, without the presence of a budget cap."