I also have a hard time believing this reports about Ferrari’s car not showing the expected simulator gains.
Recent years have shown, true pace and pecking order not really shown clearly until Melbourne.
We are only guessing until then
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The Cavallino team could adopt a development strategy during the two testing sessions in Barcelona: in the first round the car of the presentation of Reggio Emilia will debut, while in the second you will see the aerodynamic package of the Australian GP.
Experience teaches. Ferrari will carry out the same strategy that Mercedes adopted with the W10 last year.
The Red which will be shown on 11 February will be the car that will carry out the first winter test session in Barcelona from 19 to 21 February, while the car that will take to the track in Catalunya from 27 to 29 February will be the one that the Scuderia will debut in Australian GP, first race of the 2020 world championship.
As the world champion team had done in 2019, the Cavallino team thought it well to stop the aerodynamic development at some point to be ready for the presentation vernissage.
It will be a version that we could define as standard, useful to evaluate its consistency and reliability rather than performance, while the SF90 had made its debut in Spain in a configuration that was already equipped with the package that then ran (disappointing) in Melbourne .
The Maranello technicians will be able to assess whether the mechanical parts will meet the expectations of the 671 signed project and whether the tires will adapt to this revised and corrected Ferrari after the problems that emerged in 2019.
The real Rossa, therefore, can only be evaluated in the second winter testing session, when the most advanced aerodynamic package will make its debut and only then will it be possible to understand in the comparison with Mercedes and Red Bull if the single-seater will have the downforce necessary to be the protagonist on all tracks in the world.
As had happened for the silver arrow last year, the changes that will be seen will not be the result of data collection in the first week of testing, but the introduction of what should be the definitive aerodynamic appearance for the opening race .
This would have left more time in the wind tunnel to the staff directed by David Sanchez to develop concepts to increase vertical thrust without penalizing aerodynamic efficiency.
This would have sense and as we saw last year it was an strategy which paid off for Mercedes. I do hope this means that Australia´s car is really competitive.
They could go back if the problem is in the chassis or new engine itself. Remember at this stage of the game Aero is far from finalized. Even during testing sometimes we see a few teams run basic aero packages a few races in so they can utilize the test data, so if anything the problem would lie in the actual chassis itself of the engine.Just_a_fan wrote: ↑22 Jan 2020, 14:28The new car would have to be a total dog for them to reuse last year's car. Assuming that the other teams have found 0.5s over the winter, Ferrari would be fighting with McLaren for the lesser places.
I think this is a very fair point. All the leaks need to be taken with a grain of salt.
personally I'm not understanding how the engineers could be disappointed, at this stage when they haven't actually run the car. If they'd put the car on the track it'd make sense, but right now all they've done is they've designed a new car fixing last year's mistaken concept, with loads of their own data and Mercedes and Red Bull to copy, and they've done it with CFD and made a 60% model and put it in the windtunnel.zibby43 wrote: ↑24 Jan 2020, 07:36I think this is a very fair point. All the leaks need to be taken with a grain of salt.
The interesting thing is that Leo Turrini provided similar information (re: disappointing simulations) a few weeks ago. He's an award-winning Italian journalist that has unprecedented access to Ferrari (compared to most other journalists).
Ferrari has struggled with quickly addressing and recovering from aero/chassis issues in recent years (something the new simulator is supposed to help rectify). There was the 2018 Singapore update that made the car slower. This year, it took until Singapore of 2019 to try to add downforce to the car, which seemed to help over a single lap, but in the waning races, the car's race pace was still nowhere.
I'm expecting the '20 Red Bull and Mercedes cars to be strong evolutions of their 2019 predecessors. Especially with the new regulations coming out in '21. Ferrari, on the other hand, needs to make some fairly substantial changes on their '20 challenger, as they absolutely have to get more balanced downforce on the car (especially if the PU advantage won't be as strong in '20, as that won't be able to potentiate the distinctively low-drag package that Ferrari chose in '19).
Still, it's all speculation right now. Just like you said.
How can you say soon enough? It obviously is NOT anything like soon enough!!Just_a_fan wrote: ↑24 Jan 2020, 10:58Maybe they've put the designed car in the simulator and found it's not where they want it to be. Maybe they just haven't seen the lap time improvement they were expecting.
CFD and wind tunnel models only tell you about the aero. If Ferrari have changed the suspension as well, for example, they may be finding an issue in the simulator that wasn't apparent at the concept stage.
Or it's all just a ruse to make people think they're struggling. They then turn up in testing / at Oz and blow everyone away by 1s / lap.
We'll find out soon enough.
Just_a_fan pretty much took the words right off my fingertips.izzy wrote: ↑24 Jan 2020, 10:43personally I'm not understanding how the engineers could be disappointed, at this stage when they haven't actually run the car. If they'd put the car on the track it'd make sense, but right now all they've done is they've designed a new car fixing last year's mistaken concept, with loads of their own data and Mercedes and Red Bull to copy, and they've done it with CFD and made a 60% model and put it in the windtunnel.zibby43 wrote: ↑24 Jan 2020, 07:36I think this is a very fair point. All the leaks need to be taken with a grain of salt.
The interesting thing is that Leo Turrini provided similar information (re: disappointing simulations) a few weeks ago. He's an award-winning Italian journalist that has unprecedented access to Ferrari (compared to most other journalists).
Ferrari has struggled with quickly addressing and recovering from aero/chassis issues in recent years (something the new simulator is supposed to help rectify). There was the 2018 Singapore update that made the car slower. This year, it took until Singapore of 2019 to try to add downforce to the car, which seemed to help over a single lap, but in the waning races, the car's race pace was still nowhere.
I'm expecting the '20 Red Bull and Mercedes cars to be strong evolutions of their 2019 predecessors. Especially with the new regulations coming out in '21. Ferrari, on the other hand, needs to make some fairly substantial changes on their '20 challenger, as they absolutely have to get more balanced downforce on the car (especially if the PU advantage won't be as strong in '20, as that won't be able to potentiate the distinctively low-drag package that Ferrari chose in '19).
Still, it's all speculation right now. Just like you said.
This is what they do, and last year's car was very fast at some races its main problem apart from the front loading in short corners was looking after the tyres and setting it up on its super complicated suspension. So up to this point it's all familiar, basic stuff for Ferrari as far as I can see, and the CFD and model-making are quick processes, and they've had since last Spring to be working on it, so i don't see how they can be looking at the data and being surprised?
So for now i'm putting it down to engineers loving to solve problems and for that they have to have a problem! That could just be they wanted it 2s faster and they've only got 1.8, merda!!
well yes it could be the suspension, but still in the simulator it's the suspension they designed isn't it, to suit the aero and vice-versa. Everything in the sim, the wind tunnel and the CFD is all the same data basically, that they've created in their virtual development world. It's all one theory, and the same theory
I was referring to his comment that the lap times or improvements in terms of overall points of downforce gained were not where Ferrari wanted them to be at.izzy wrote: ↑24 Jan 2020, 22:50well yes it could be the suspension, but still in the simulator it's the suspension they designed isn't it, to suit the aero and vice-versa. Everything in the sim, the wind tunnel and the CFD is all the same data basically, that they've created in their virtual development world. It's all one theory, and the same theory
I don't see how it can be giving surprises. Not now. So yes it might be just giving a bit less laptime than they were hoping or it might be sandbags or pure story. If you list all the possibilities one of them is bound to be right The main thing for us is that, as far as i can see, when the real car hits the track it quite likely will be competitive and not a lemon after all
Oh okay yes well i have posted that same thought, that it's probably being dissatisfied rather than surprised by an 'issue'. That clarification confirms it, and so then it all depends on what their target was doesn't it. It might be refining, chasing that last tenth or two that they know is there somewhere. If i were a Ferrari fan I'd be reasonably optimistic still, I bet 2020 is going to be mostly about the driving more than anythingzibby43 wrote: ↑25 Jan 2020, 00:29I was referring to his comment that the lap times or improvements in terms of overall points of downforce gained were not where Ferrari wanted them to be at.
I never said that these reported results were surprising or that they came out of the blue, merely that they were allegedly unsatisfactory.
With no regulation changes for '20, the teams have a lot of data to work with for reference purposes. But even in preparing for the '19 season, admidst all the uncertainty in terms of what it would take to have a competitive car, James Allison referred to the massive amount of lost downforce points that the team observed with their first iteration of the W10 (when compared to the W09).
They slowly chipped away until they could recover as many as those points as possible. That's just one example of how the teams could be pleased or disappointed with the results of simulation data.
Turrini recently clarified: "I have NOT written that the 2020 Ferrari will be a toilet (bad). I trivially reported that the Maranello technicians were still not satisfied with the data collected at the factory, making it clear that there was no lack of time to fix things."
There is still time. But while you are spending time addressing an issue, a rival is further honing their design.