Ferrari upgrades chassis for Bahrain and Miami

      The poor start to the season, of course, upset the Ferrari team, not just its fans. It was frustrating, but not discouraging, and Maranello is working with redoubled tenacity, trying to figure out the shortcomings of the SF-25 chassis, which managed to manifest themselves in Melbourne and Shanghai.

      So far, the car has only shown its potential in the sprint during the Chinese race weekend, when Lewis Hamilton claimed pole and then won the short Saturday race. At the same time, he was ahead of McLaren in just 19 laps.  Oscar Piastri by 6.889 seconds, and Max Verstappen's RB21 by 9.804 seconds.

      But there was no sign of a speed advantage in the main race of the weekend. According to Gazzetta dello Sport, already in Australia it turned out that the SF-25 car is very sensitive to changes in ground clearance height, which immediately causes a significant loss of downforce generated by the bottom of the car.

      But that's not the only problem: the efficiency of the chassis as a whole is noticeably affected not only by the settings, but also by the fuel load, and on Sunday the picture is noticeably different from what was observed on the previous day of the weekend.

      After the Australian stage, Loic Serra, technical director of the Scuderia, immediately returned to the base in Maranello to try to quickly find some kind of solution taking into account the identified shortcomings.

      Ferrari engineers are convinced that there should be no fundamental problems related to the design of the chassis and its aerodynamics. The data obtained using computer simulation technologies in preparation for the Japanese Grand Prix suggests that the red cars have good potential in the coming weekend.

      The difficulties that were observed in the previous two stages are explained by a combination of the suspension features of the car and its aerodynamic body kit, and this affects the behavior of the rear of the SF-25. Hence the decrease in downforce and instability – this is affected not only by the height of the ground clearance, but also by the less efficient operation of the diffuser.

      In the process of finding possible solutions in Maranello, about twenty possible ways to change the settings were tried and tested on the simulator, and the results of this work should be tested on the Suzuka track.

      But so far we are only talking about adjusting the balance mainly by adjusting the suspension, however, more significant changes will be prepared for the Bahrain stage, in particular, work is being completed on a new version of the rear part of the underbody. The changes will not be particularly significant, but they will be a harbinger of the first stage of chassis modernization, timed to coincide with the Miami Grand Prix in May.

      Despite the poor start to the season, expectations at Maranello are still very high, the team believes in SF-25, but everyone understands that mistakes like those that led to the double disqualification in China should no longer be allowed.