Ferrari testing new FIA splash guards at Fiorano

Ferrari testing new FIA splash guards at Fiorano

Curious minds hoping to catch a glimpse of Ferrari’s much-anticipated upgrades to the SF-24 on Thursday saw something much different at the team’s Fiorano test track.

Something much, much different.

While the upgraded SF-24 will hit the track later today, in the earlier portions of Ferrari’s Thursday. testing session reserve driver Ollie Bearman took the F1-75 — the team’s challenger for the 2022 Formula 1 season — to the track with some striking new features.

Splash guards.

In images captured by Formu1a.uno, massive splash guards were placed around all four tires, as the sport’s governing body continues its effort to facilitate racing in wet conditions:

This is not the first time a team has tested the splash guard design. Last season it was Mercedes who bolted on the splash guards for a testing session, which received mixed reviews from Andrew Shovlin, the team’s trackside engineering director.

“There’s more work to do on them,” said Shovlin last July. “It’s a problem that it would be useful to have a solution for because I think the teams, and certainly the fans, hate it if a race can’t go ahead because the conditions are too difficult.

“But they’re not ready to be moved into production and regulation at the moment. So there’s definitely work to do. They do improve the spray that you get from the [tires], but you still get a lot coming from the diffuser, in the way that the rear wing’s pulling it up. That’s all very powerful.

“But you know, interesting first steps, and we’re providing the car and some bits to do that development.”

During Thursday’s testing session, Ferrari was able to generate wet conditions by soaking the test track at Fiorano, and in another photograph captured by Formu1a.uno you can see Bearman and Arthur Leclerc both on the track, with the spray created by the wet conditions and the splash guards:

You can see even more photographs here:

While Pirelli has developed the “full wet” tire compound that allows drivers to race in severe wet conditions, the design of those tires — which “can evacuate 85 litres of water per second per tyre at 300kph” according to Pirelli — creates a tremendous amount of spray, hampering visibility for the drivers.

The FIA is hoping the splash guard design can offer an effective solution.

Of course, while the FIA might be interested in the results of the splash guard test, the Tifosi are much more concerned with the upgraded SF-24, and whether those upgrades will bring Ferrari even closer to Red Bull this season.