Weight and aero often clashed for Ferrari with F1-75

Finalising the Ferrari F1-75 was a constant trade-off between weight and aero performance says their chassis boss.

Ahead of a 2022 season that is all-change, the teams have been hard at work finding their ideal starting point with their new challengers.

Ferrari are one of the teams to go brave with their designs, theF1-75certainly ticking the box for innovation, but it was not a smooth process.

In fact, according to the team’s head of chassis project engineering Fabio Montecchi, the team met the challenge of keeping their focus on performance as the weight of the F1-75 and aero performance clashed.

Only a few more days and we’ll be back on track with F1-75 again#essereFerrari@Charles_Leclercpic.twitter.com/KqIep8gA2K

— Scuderia Ferrari (@ScuderiaFerrari)February 20, 2022

“The biggest difficulty we encountered was harmonising the objectives we had set ourselves,” he said in an interview with the Ferrari website, as quoted by Motorsport.com.

“These objectives often conflicted with each other, so it was necessary to find the best compromise to optimise overall performance.

“Often the goal of car weight and aerodynamic performance have come into conflict. In those moments it’s important not to lose sight of how well the car performs.”

A common prediction across the grid is that the challengers will continue to evolve right up until the start of the season, with that process continuing at a rapid pace throughout the record 23-race calendarscheduled for 2022.

And Montecchi explained that such is the magnitude of the regulation changes, they are indeed still very much in the exploratory stage.

“This regulation is so different from the past that it has projected us into unknown territory that is still to be explored,” he said.

“Let me give you an example: the bottom of the car will no longer be flat, but will be three-dimensional. This will be the first time since 1982.

“Even just this small content brings with it many implications for the car’s set-up and the design of the suspension.”

Ferrari team boss Mattia Binotto has admitted that already the teampicked up a detail from a rival challengerfor their F1-75.

They will all soon hit the track for the group shakedown at Spain’s Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, a three-day event held from February 23-25.