Ferrari unveil their heavily-modified 2024 F1 challenger

Ferrari have become the latest Formula One team to show off their 2024 F1 car with the Italian team revealing their brand-new SF-24 in a short online video.

The Maranello-based F1 outfit presented its new car a day earlier compared to last year as it wanted to give itself an additional day to prepare itself for the upcoming pre-season testing that takes place next week in Bahrain.

The new car will bear the name SF-24 which continues the tradition that the Scuderia established at the beginning of the new hybrid era in 2014. The Italian outfit will race with an unchanged driver line-up with Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc set to drive for the team together for the last time before seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton joins Ferrari in 2025.

Following a difficult 2023 F1 campaign that saw Ferrari clinch a single victory courtesy of Carlos Sainz, the team has revised its last year's car in every aspect, claiming that the 2024 F1 machine is "95% new" compared to its predecessor.

While several rivals that have already shown off their new car opted for a mainly black livery for weight saving, Ferrari have hardly changed the colour scheme of their new SF-24 compared to its predecessor. The new car sports a higher percentage of black colouring with parallel yellow and white stripes running along the length of the sidepod and on the nose cone.

With last year's SF-23 having proved difficult and unpredictable to driver, the Maranello-based squad stated that the aim was to give the two drivers "a car that is easy to drive and that reacts predictably, with as a starting point, the positive feeling the drivers had in the cockpit over the final few races of last season. The goal is to allow them to make the most of the power unit’s potential, combined with their undoubted skill behind the wheel."

“With the SF-24 we wanted to create a whole new platform," Enrico Cardile, technical director chassis, explained. "In fact, it can be said that every area of the car has been redesigned.

"We have transformed the indications of the drivers into engineering greatnesses and have accommodated their need to have a car that is easier to drive and therefore to exploit and take to the limit.

"We have not set ourselves any design constraints other than to obtain a robust and sincere single-seater, which also does on the track what we see in the wind tunnel, taking as a point of reference the direction of development that we had adopted last year and that at the end of the season had made us take a leap forward in terms of competitiveness".

Ferrari's 2024 F1 car is the first one that Team Principal Fred Vasseur has properly overseen the development of, having started in his role in January last year when work on the SF-23 was essentially complete.

The Frenchman commented: “Presenting a new car to the world for the first time is always a very exciting moment for me and the drivers, even if we are all already thinking about the moment we will go head to head with our rivals on track. This year, we must start off where we left off at the end of last season, when we were consistent front runners, with a view to constantly improving in all areas.

"The longest ever Formula 1 season awaits us and Charles, Carlos and I all agree, we must be more clinical and effective in how we manage the races, making bold choices, in order to get the best possible result at every Grand Prix. It’s often said that your fans can give you an extra gear and that will definitely be true in what will be a very closely contested championship and we are proud to know we can count on our “tifosi” from around the world.”