Scuderia Ferrari SF90

[CLKGTR]

Why are they using small metal plates on the bottom sides of their front wing mainplane? Maybe balast? It is usually placed in the 50 cm wide central section.

[e36jon]

I believe those are titanium skid-blocks. You can actually see the marks on them in that image.

[zibby43]

Both Ferraris ended up running their "spoon" RWs this past weekend:





VET explained after qualifying that the car's rear end felt nervous and unstable for him (the exact opposite of what VET likes from his car).

[roon]

I believe those are titanium skid-blocks. You can actually see the marks on them in that image.

Yeah. The driver's left side looks more scraped, as well. Which should make sense for roll and/or curb riding on a clockwise circuit.

[humble sabot]

url]https://scontent-mxp1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/ ... e=5DB237FF[/url]



https://scontent-mxp1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/ ... e=5DA12033

Is the car on the ground in one shot and not the other? Or did they change how much sag/droop they're running? The shape of the cutout is different too, which I find interesting as the part of the wishbone that crosses the bodywork hasn't changed apparently

[zibby43]

Ferrari can deploy up to 40 more hp than Mercedes or Red Bull in qualifying only.

The extra deployment never appears in race trim; not even at the race start or for overtakes.

Rival engineers are stumped.

https://www.auto-motor-und-sport.de/for ... ng-rennen/

[SiLo]

It does raise the question as to how they do it. Wonder if it's some grey area of the rules that others just haven't figured out yet.

[marvin78]

It does raise the question as to how they do it. Wonder if it's some grey area of the rules that others just haven't figured out yet.

It would raise it, if this were not just assumptions.

[Just_a_fan]

I'm guessing it's a one shot cooling solution that allows them to go mad for one lap only. Some way of prechilling the coolant perhaps.

[aral]

I am more stumped by the fact that somebody is saying that Merc can get HP from GPS ! Yes, they may be able to see a faster speed, but this does not mean more HP other than the fact that that Ferrari may have a quali mode.....the same way that Merc already have. In practice, Ferrari is usually close to Merc, but in quali, Merc have nearly always been ahead as they had this special quali mode. Now Ferrari also have this and in quali, the cars are also fairly close.
So, there really is no mystery. both have a quali mode that provides more power for quali, and because Merc know that theirs gives around 40 HP, they are assuming that Ferrari mode also provides a similar boost.

[Bandit1216]

I'm guessing it's a one shot cooling solution that allows them to go mad for one lap only. Some way of prechilling the coolant perhaps.

It's been said on here it's a one-lap, battery topped, lap with the waste gates open and no harvesting. The open waste gates give 40 bhp more because of less pumping losses.

[e30ernest]

I am more stumped by the fact that somebody is saying that Merc can get HP from GPS !

I think this was discussed somewhere around here before. It's plausible they are using GPS traces along with known gear ratios and sound analysis to extrapolate a car's power.

Back in the early 2000's we used similar software (GPS traces with sound analysis and gear ratios) to get power estimates of road cars. They were pretty close to what we got on actual dynos (+/- 5-10hp) but that's for road car's. I don't know how well that scales to F1 power and speed.

[MtthsMlw]

AMuS always explained that by calculating drag (from photos) and GPS data. This leaves quite some error margin though.

[subcritical71]

I am more stumped by the fact that somebody is saying that Merc can get HP from GPS !

I think this was discussed somewhere around here before. It's plausible they are using GPS traces along with known gear ratios and sound analysis to extrapolate a car's power.

Back in the early 2000's we used similar software (GPS traces with sound analysis and gear ratios) to get power estimates of road cars. They were pretty close to what we got on actual dynos (+/- 5-10hp) but that's for road car's. I don't know how well that scales to F1 power and speed.

I would think a road car would be much easier as they don’t have the variability of downforce levels changing track to track. Or is this somehow taken into account in the calculation?

[timbo]

I would think a road car would be much easier as they don’t have the variability of downforce levels changing track to track. Or is this somehow taken into account in the calculation?

They know their own downforce levels, they also have GPS data from the corners, so they can make some DF estimates.
Also, if you know both top speed AND acceleration (which they do), they can estimate the drag too.