Biggest ‘filming day’ of the year? Ferrari SF-24 ‘2.0’ set to break cover soon
Charles Leclerc sits in the Ferrari SF-24.
Ferrari’s upgraded SF-24 will be put to the test this week with the Scuderia scheduling a filming day for the chance to see if the wind tunnel data correlates into lap time.
Second fastest in the opening rounds of this year’s championship, it was Ferrari who featured on the podium alongside Red Bull in the opening four races.
Ferrari will use a filming day to test the SF-24 ‘2.0’
But knocked off that perch by McLaren in China, the Woking team went on to affirm their spot as the P2 team with Lando Norris’ victory at the Miami Grand Prix where the Briton raced McLaren’s heavily-revised MCL38 that’s said to be worth four-tenths of a second.
Ferrari are set to reply with an upgrade of their own.
“It will be a very important upgrade,” said Charles Leclerc. “It will determine how the rest of our season plays out. I’m looking forward to that and I hope that we can take a big step forward.
“It’s going to be an arms race of upgrades this year, and I’m glad that we’ll soon have new parts on our car that will hopefully be as good as McLaren’s.”
The package reportedly includes Red Bull-styled sidepods with slimmer radiator openings, a new floor and a front wing.
But in a season in which Mercedes have been caught out by correlation issues, Ferrari hope to avoid a similar stumble by putting the upgraded car through its paces in a private filming day at their Fiorano circuit before heading to Imola.
According to formu1a.uno, it will be a “decisive appointment” for the “substantially” modified SF-24.
Repeating their plans from 2023 when they completed a filming day before Austria to test the SF-23’s new front wing and floor, the report claims this year “Frederic Vasseur and Enrico Cardile have once again planned a day of testing to bring the SF-24 in its 2.0 version to the track.
“Between Thursday and Friday therefore in Fiorano, Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz will have the opportunity to drive the Cavallino single-seater for 200km – 100km each.”
Adding that the car has performed well up to this point, the Italian publication added that the first edition SF-24 has “reached its ‘peak’ performance and now needs, after a long period of learning and work by the technicians who have extracted its potential, to be updated.”
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Fred Vasseur downplays ‘game-changing’ Imola upgrades
Although Ferrari team boss Vasseur believes the Scuderia will be in the mix in Imola, the Frenchman downplayed talk of calling Ferrari’s forthcoming upgrade a game-changer.
“Without a doubt, we will be able to fight for the victory in Imola. But I believe there is a gap that varies from track to track and from compound to compound, which makes more of a difference than an update,” he said in Miami.
Asked if Ferrari were speeding up their development given the next race is on Italian soil, the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, he replied: “No when you are doing the development it’s not that we want to bring something to Imola because it’s in Italy, we are pushing for the development and as soon as we are ready, we are producing parts.
“The fact that Imola is close to the factory, it’s also helping to bring something because that we can release the parts a bit later. But I don’t know, it was nothing to do with Italy.
“And then again, on this, that we don’t have to expect that it will be a game changer, but it’s so tight that we can work performance.”
He added: “It’s an opportunity for us because that if we are doing another small step, I think that we will be really in a position to fight with them [Red Bull] every single weekend.”