Farnborough wrote: ↑06 Feb 2025, 12:47Highly unlikely that LH would have influenced the car design concept down to that level during his swap negotiations. I'd put it at infinitesimal in size.
Driver not car, apologies, the LH meeting with John Elkann reported as innocent in 2023 ? likely the genesis of move, LH must have been of enquiring mindset to even go towards that, perhaps offering admiration toward Ferrari, met with a friendly " it's not too late to come here" feel of general and probing "dance" coupled with a natural break in CS contract coming up at 2024 end. A plant the seeds and see if they grow from both sides.
In other words, a business/image/possibility driven landscape, and nothing technical at all.
Back to the car, LH can see the relative team and chassis performance, trajectory etc along with relative front running pace and abilities to identify contain and advance their car throughout more recent years results.
For the 677 specifically, now at the point in rules set at which everyone is settled, concepts convergence and smaller gains to be had, it's a natural refinement of technical layout to fully consider what are relative fine details (in comparison to 2022 raw delivery) pull rod etc coming fully into that arena.
Of course each team has substantial internal and supplier support for suspension concept, the reality of what is desirable, the compromise needed to package it, which areas to accept in contrasting one attribute against another, that's if difference in direction causes a technical debate.
This was observed in the AN 2022 concept delivery, of vehicle and aero facilitated around key suspension attribute, that's nothing unusual.
I'm expecting to see this, 677, carrying many refinement based on extensive data set of previous three chassis. Little bits everywhere to squeeze it all in mitigation of noted problems and potential developments as it accumilates track time now going into this season running.
It's an exciting time for them. Non of us, or Italian press leaks, can accurately give projection though. They've as much chance as any of the direct front runners in being fast.
Equally, there's alot of deep thinking going down in all the teams and their technical expertise being matched against one another. It's not an easy thing to accomplish, and why it's so intense and interesting to see how they stack up.
I'm expecting to see this, 677, carrying many refinement based on extensive data set of previous three chassis. Little bits everywhere to squeeze it all in mitigation of noted problems and potential developments as it accumilates track time now going into this season running.
This is exactly what this shift to pull-front is if we assume kinematically the ideas are the same. The switch to pull-rod does not change the characteristics, as many people on here think it does. If there is a characteristic change, that is because they either fiddle with wishbone geometry or made changes to the inboard components.
An optimization, is all it is. A very small lowering of the CoFG, slightly lighter assembly, and a slightly better compromise aerodynamically speaking. The downside to all this is the packaging is less ideal for servicing purposes.
The truth is that the gains available at this stage is all coming from small refinements.
