The comparison between the behavior of the various single-seaters on the track in the 2024 Formula 1 World Championship revealed that Ferrari introduced the system on the SF-24 that benefited Red Bull and even managed to improve it compared to the original.
Self Ferrari has almost completely closed the gap to Red Bull during this Formula 1 World Championship 2024 it is thanks to the fact that the Maranello engineers would not only have discovered the “secret” that allowed the Austrian team to dominate the first two years of the new era of ‘ground effect F1’ but they would even have managed to improve it compared to the original. This is in fact what emerges from the technical analysis carried out by the specialized newspaper Cars, Motor and Sport putting in comparison the single-seaters of Verstappen and Perez and the SF-24s of the fresh winner of the Monte Carlo GP, Charles Leclerc, and his teammate Carlos Sainz.
In fact, in the detailed article signed by Michael Schmidt it is explained how Red Bull, since 2022, has managed to deliberately lower the rear of the car on the straightsinitially drawing an incredible advantage in terms of maximum speed (which became devastating when the pilots could activate the DRS), effectively simulating the effect of those active suspensions banned in Formula 1 since 1994. And especially which rival teams (and how) have managed to equip themselves with similar systems.
The brilliant intuition that allowed Red Bull to have this large technical advantage over its opponents at the beginning of the new era of Formula 1 in which only conventional chassis are allowed was to significantly reduce the aerodynamic load and air resistance through a sophisticated system that allows the rear height from the ground to be optimized depending on the speed. This allows them to adjust the chassis so that the rear is relatively high in slow and medium speed corners and therefore has room to cushion curbs and bumps quite gently and instead as low as possible on a straight line and in fast corners.
Leclerc is also the fastest in FP2 at Imola: the Ferrari SF-24 Evo convinces, Red Bull in difficulty
Only after two years did the competition manage to copy this system from Red Bull. Or rather, part of the competition. To date, in fact, McLaren, Aston Martin, Williams, Sauber and Alpine still operate in a conventional way, playing with shock absorbers and springs to vary the height of the single-seater at various points on a track, while Ferrari, Mercedes, Haas and Racing Bulls, after having switched from the old disc springs to torsion bars, now have systems similar to those used by the Milton Keynes team on the cars of Verstappen and Perez.
And, according to the comparison made by Auto, Motor und Sport, Ferrari would even perfect the system introduced by Red Bull so much so that it now has a better one than the original. The proof of this would be the fact that no other car competing in the 2024 Formula 1 World Championship absorbs bumps and curbs like the SF-24s of Leclerc and Sainz while being competitive on both straights and fast corners.
