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Ferrari’s Monegasque driver Charles Leclerc posted the quickest lap on the final day of pre-season testing in Bahrain to end the running on top ahead of Mercedes racer George Russell and Stake F1 driver Zhou Guanyu.
Hope is a good thing. May be the best of the things.
I was just speaking relatively -- at very high speed corners (250+), I think these cars lose little compared to previous generation cars. They lose plenty in other types of corners I think. I think Hungary is also a good example that truly shows the weaknesses of these cars. These cars are about 3s off 2020 pole lap. Of course not comparable conditions et cetera. But that's a massive gap and I think the best we might see that gap go down is to ~2s assuming teams slash half a second this year and half a second in 2025, and I feel even that is optimistic.mendis wrote: ↑20 Feb 2024, 19:06That is still slower than the 2020 cars! There is a comparison of W11 and RB19 with Spa laps, where the RB19 looks lethargic through high speed corners compared to W11, while it was faster on straight line. I don't think the current generation cars can match the previous generation cars in any type of corner.f1isgood wrote: ↑20 Feb 2024, 18:54I personally think none of the top 5 teams will find 1s a lap growth either in race trim or qualifying trim. I think these cars have lots of limitations with their suspensions, and very rigid mechanical platform and are 50 kilos overweight compared to previous era cars, which puts a ceiling on how fast they can go. If 10 kilos is 3 tenths, then their ceilings must be invariably 1.5s lower than the previous generation of cars (2017-2021).
Of course these cars have strengths like downforce in high speed corners and better straight line speed but over a lap in a reasonably variant track, I don't think any of these teams have 1s or more to gain. But I could be completely wrong in any case.
I think they allowed Ferrari to run those deflectors in the front wing to compensate for the 22->23 rule changes that reduced performance in theory. This year I believe none of the teams have such tricks in the front wing except Mercedes, although some teams might have shown fake cars.CouncilorIrissa wrote: ↑20 Feb 2024, 19:07In his 2021 interviews, Brawn implied that they would ban teams attempts to get around the regulations intention.f1isgood wrote: ↑20 Feb 2024, 19:01The late 2022 W13 wing never ran on their car if I recall correctly. And yes, the FIA is indeed spineless, and killed the Ferrari concept. Ferrari also never got their concept well enough to mitigate the porpoising or adapt their car to a technical directive in any case. You can't have a concept that can be broken by a technical directive in hindsight. And RB had the superior car and concept from the get go. But they were only fighting with Ferrari because they were 20 kilograms overweight, and once they got rid of that, they were very quick, especially in the races.CouncilorIrissa wrote: ↑20 Feb 2024, 18:57This ruleset has been a failure for a year now.
FIA killed this ruleset 6 months in by deciding to raise the floor edges and diffuser throat. They also failed to prevent teams from implementing solutions that produce dirty air, such as front wing vanes like the ones on the late W13 and SF23. And now they gave the green light to Mercedes' front wing that mimics what teams were doing before 2022.
Absolutely spineless from them.
They never did, not against the big teams. The most they could stomach is banning AM's armchair RW BS.
That's it.
Had RB showed up at the min weight, they might not have spent as much time on the aero package. So it's not a free lunch here. You are just stealing from peter to pay paul which is why they were overweight to begin with.f1isgood wrote: ↑20 Feb 2024, 19:01The late 2022 W13 wing never ran on their car if I recall correctly. And yes, the FIA is indeed spineless, and killed the Ferrari concept. Ferrari also never got their concept well enough to mitigate the porpoising or adapt their car to a technical directive in any case. You can't have a concept that can be broken by a technical directive in hindsight. And RB had the superior car and concept from the get go. But they were only fighting with Ferrari because they were 20 kilograms overweight, and once they got rid of that, they were very quick, especially in the races.CouncilorIrissa wrote: ↑20 Feb 2024, 18:57This ruleset has been a failure for a year now.
FIA killed this ruleset 6 months in by deciding to raise the floor edges and diffuser throat. They also failed to prevent teams from implementing solutions that produce dirty air, such as front wing vanes like the ones on the late W13 and SF23. And now they gave the green light to Mercedes' front wing that mimics what teams were doing before 2022.
Absolutely spineless from them.
Maybe I should have been more precise -- instead of stating RB had the superior car and concept, I should have phrased it as simply superior concept. It did not matter in the end as Ferrari made a fragile car, both conceptually, and in terms of reliability. They were never winning titles in 2022 even if the Technical Directive did not hit them. Given that their car had some degree of bouncing in 2023, I would have to guess the same for 2023, even though I believe they might have been more competitive and won more races.AR3-GP wrote: ↑20 Feb 2024, 20:11Had RB showed up at the min weight, they might not have spent as much time on the aero package. So it's not a free lunch here. You are just stealing from peter to pay paul which is why they were overweight to begin with.f1isgood wrote: ↑20 Feb 2024, 19:01The late 2022 W13 wing never ran on their car if I recall correctly. And yes, the FIA is indeed spineless, and killed the Ferrari concept. Ferrari also never got their concept well enough to mitigate the porpoising or adapt their car to a technical directive in any case. You can't have a concept that can be broken by a technical directive in hindsight. And RB had the superior car and concept from the get go. But they were only fighting with Ferrari because they were 20 kilograms overweight, and once they got rid of that, they were very quick, especially in the races.CouncilorIrissa wrote: ↑20 Feb 2024, 18:57This ruleset has been a failure for a year now.
FIA killed this ruleset 6 months in by deciding to raise the floor edges and diffuser throat. They also failed to prevent teams from implementing solutions that produce dirty air, such as front wing vanes like the ones on the late W13 and SF23. And now they gave the green light to Mercedes' front wing that mimics what teams were doing before 2022.
Absolutely spineless from them.
There's no such a rumour, most mentioned is up to 0.5s since final, Japan spec. At best, very best (!) they are 1s better than launch-spec SF23 at its peak, which is also sensible as it would mean roughly only 0.5s improvement during 2023 development. "Only" since the car was heavily compromised in early 2023.
If not worse 
I just think that Ferrari didn't have a shot in 2022 because of their failure to prioritize their lead driver and also because the car was unreliable. In 2023, things improved but realibility (Lec DNF'ed race #1) and race operations still lacked relative to Red Bull. I'll probably stop this discussion here as I think it's diverging from this year's winter test. Ferrari seem to be in a much better position than 2023 at least, hopefully it's a position good enough that allows them to compete for multiple race wins on merit this year. Beyond that is a bonus in my view for 2024. I expect Red Bull to still remain the team to beat, hopefully they have a car that's much closer to top teams than last year. That would make for a fun season.