MPH: Ferrari's big F1 car changes — why team is convinced of major advance

Hopefully you have all now calmed down from the reveal of every team’s ’25 livery pasted onto their ’24 cars earlier in the week…

F1 75 was an event which allowed F1 to project itself in a high-profile way to casual fans, maybe helped reach out to some new ones. What it also did was provide the teams with the perfect excuse not to reveal their 2025 cars – and half of them took that opportunity. So leaving the core of the fanbase short-changed. But to their credit, Haas, McLaren, Williams and Ferrari all got in some ‘filming day’ running of their new cars and provided a few details of them, while Sauber released computerised renderings of theirs. The Racing Bull ran a few laps with a mix of old bodywork and new.

The rest will all break cover in Bahrain testing next week, but from those we’ve seen so far, the big intrigue is surely around the McLaren MCL39 and the Ferrari SF25, from two of the ‘big four’ teams which might be expected to be figuring in the fight for the world championship.

Even though the performance differences between the top four cars last year were very small, they each had distinct traits, the importance of which varied from track to track. As a generalisation, the McLaren had the best overall balance between low-speed and high-speed corners and was usually the fastest in the mid-range speed. This was ideal in terms of adding downforce to the car as it was developed. Those additions tended not to disrupt the balance.

The Ferrari was invariably the fastest in low-speed corners, competitive in the mid-range but poor in high-speed. The Red Bull was poor in low-speed, competitive in mid-range and often the fastest in high-speed. The Mercedes was poor in low speed and inconsistent but when it was working well really shone in high-speed sections.

Looking at the new cars from McLaren and Ferrari, the former has been very mindful of retaining that excellent balance and has not changed concept, but merely gone aggressive with the packaging, to allow the aerodynamicists more downforce-creating volume to exploit. By contrast Ferrari has attempted to address last year’s insurmountable shortfall in high-speed downforce with a significant rethink, now adopting pull-rod front suspension (like McLaren and Red Bull) and a cockpit which has been re-positioned slightly further back.

These may not sound like radical changes and certainly you’d need a trained eye to distinguish which Ferrari was the ’24 and which the ’25 if they were in the same livery (they are not). But when the difference between being the fastest and the fourth-fastest car last year was often so tiny, small changes can be hugely significant.

Ferrari believes these adjustments will release the bottleneck shortfall of rear downforce at the low ride heights seen at high speeds. The pull-rod layout is theoretically better aerodynamically. The airflow path through the suspension elements to the floor is cleaner, also helping extract more from the front wing ahead. But perhaps more significantly, it gives a surer control of the front ride height in the last part of its travel. Although there’s more initial movement for a given stiffness of spring, it’s naturally stiffer in the last part of its travel — i.e. it has a greater rising rate. If the front is more resistant to being compressed towards the end of its travel, the whole car – front and rear – can run with a lower static ride height. To the benefit of underbody-generated downforce generally but with particularly useful gains at the rear. Because these cars need to run super-low to the ground, that’s important.

The pull-rod front layout also gives a lower centre of gravity — allowing a reduction in the angle of the axis between front and rear centre of gravity (always lower at the back than the front). This too is important aerodynamically, for it means less compromise in the suspension kinematics to keep the ride height changes in response to load consistent between front and rear.

There are downsides to the front pull-rod; it tends to be heavier as the rod itself is acting in tension rather than compression so needs to be stronger. There are some packaging complications too. But if these are sufficiently well resolved, Red Bull, McLaren and now Ferrari believe the aero gains will be worth more lap time than losses cost. But technical director (chassis), Loic Serra, insists, “The front suspension is only the most obvious of many significant changes.”

Likely the best secrets are in the underfloor. But in moving the cockpit slightly further back, Ferrari has increased the distance between the front wheels and the sidepods/leading edge of the floor. This is towards what Red Bull has been doing for the last three years and should make the underbody performance less sensitive to the disruptive front wheel wake.

Last year the Ferrari was not as rounded a performer as the McLaren, its competitiveness depending more upon the track layout. Partly this was about McLaren’s greater commitment to front wing flexibility, but it was also inherent in the Ferrari’s layout. The feeling at the Scuderia is that it has made very significant advances. Its simulation numbers suggest so. But then, so do McLaren’s of its car…