With the Bahrain GP and testing done and dusted it’s time to take a look at the updates Ferrari brought to the track. The Scuderia tweaked their car in order to achieve two things: more downforce and more cooling.
To generate more downforce the team brought two solutions, one on the front wing and one, to balance it out, on the back with a dual monkey seat.
Starting from the latter, Ferrari brought an innovative concept, by adding a whole separate structure attached to the twin pillars instead of the gearbox case. This is something we haven’t really seen before.
Perhaps less evident at a glance are the tweaks to the front wing. Looking at the main plane (picture below), the slot which was only partial in the AUS and CHI spec has now been elongated to the full width (green arrows), this new slot is supported by two pieces which also act as vortex generators. Also slightly different is the leading edge of the tunnel which has been moved towards the centre of the wing. Beside all of this, the flap number 4 also had to be changed to work with the new setup.
Looking at the top of the wing the flaps have been modified both in the inner and outer part, they now have a more straight profile. Finally the inner most part of the upper flaps is now more pointy and been they’re lower in the new spec, they seem to be working harder the Y250 vortex which generates in this area. All of this things hint toward a Higher Downforce wing.
Lastly we’ll now take a look at the way Ferrari adapted to the more intense heat found in the Bahrani desert. The Scuderia acted in two main areas. Firstly the opened up little slats aside the cockpit.
Also, as expected, the engine cover received some attention, with a larger opening at the rear to expel more hot air coming from the Power Unit.
The heat of the desert seem to have affected IceMan more than Vettel. In fact, if you look closely at the picture below, you will see that Raikkonen had hist him open two little pinholes at the very tip of the nose cone to draw some air into the cockpit.
