F14-T- Development & News

[Muhammad Ansib]

I hope we are still not suffering from y250 vortex drag penalties like last season.

I am not sure if we are still not properly utilising the effect of underbody vortices. This makes us not make efficeient use the limited undertray to generate downforce. Afraid we arent properly using the vortices to seal the undertray and better control the flow direction to feed the diffuser. This was apparent is testing in Jerez, when we tried out two different iterations of diffuser.
This is where is think Red Bull are ahead at the moment. They run visibly high rake than any manufacturers.They are able to exploit the groundeffect D/F more than any other team.

Absolutely Amazing these GIF animations. which race ?

[Gould]

Must be last year sometime. It is a V8 car.

[zike]

What can we do with the engine, how to make it more powerful?.......as far as I know we can not do anything with it

[Gerhard Berger]

Absolutely Amazing these GIF animations. which race ?

Austin last year i think.

[wacc]

What can we do with the engine, how to make it more powerful?.......as far as I know we can not do anything with it

They can. They are working to make the power unit operate closer to its full power potential and to optimise power delivery for better traction and driveability. Other thing is that the Merc power unit may have the absolute power potential higher.

[Hornet]

What can we do with the engine, how to make it more powerful?.......as far as I know we can not do anything with it

For this year, we can make reliability upgrades to the engine. And if you are smart enough, you can sneak in some hidden performance behind those reliability upgrades.

[eugene22n]

Renault developed their V8 over the years during the freeze but it sure wasn't overnight but over several years.

I am pessimistic that anything will change drastically in terms of the pecking order of the engines this year. Especially since we aren't likely to see as many engine failures to draw upgrade reasons.

For so many years Ferrari have asked to focus more on the power unit and this is what we got. Now the team can only hope to make up as much as of the gap as possible on the aerodynamics side.

Power heavy tracks are going to be nearly hopeless.

[gazoz]

Renault developed their V8 over the years during the freeze but it sure wasn't overnight but over several years.

I am pessimistic that anything will change drastically in terms of the pecking order of the engines this year. Especially since we aren't likely to see as many engine failures to draw upgrade reasons.

For so many years Ferrari have asked to focus more on the power unit and this is what we got. Now the team can only hope to make up as much as of the gap as possible on the aerodynamics side.

Power heavy tracks are going to be nearly hopeless.

yes but there is so much more than just the power unit , all the electronics that come with it has also played a huge part in F1 and if its not all right then you will suffer as we are

[WS6TransAm01]

yes but there is so much more than just the power unit , all the electronics that come with it has also played a huge part in F1 and if its not all right then you will suffer as we are

I agree. Shot in the dark, but my guess is this was another naturally aspirated ICE formula we would not be in as deep a hole as we are now. If we were, it would be time to pack up and go home. This is the only excuse Ferrari has now. They wanted a focus on engines but not electric motors. Who knows....

[gazoz]

I agree. Shot in the dark, but my guess is this was another naturally aspirated ICE formula we would not be in as deep a hole as we are now. If we were, it would be time to pack up and go home. This is the only excuse Ferrari has now. They wanted a focus on engines but not electric motors. Who knows....

Agree

[PadGeT]

Getting a bit OT, but who said Ferrari wanted to focus on ICE only? Lets face it, hybrid is the future & one of the reason Ferrari is in F1, is dat it gives them massive opportunity to ramp up R&D studies for new technologies and gradually implement them on their future road cars. In that sense. Ferrari has no excuses.

[RedRebel40]

Even if we hired Adrian Newey not much will change on the car I think. It's not only having good people inside the team but also having them on the right places. You can't let Raikonen design the cars and let Dominicale ride the cars. Its about placing the right people on the right spot. I don't think Dominicale is up to the job to get the most out of the staff. If you see in which way Aldo functions at Mercedes then you can say that we haven't used him very well during the Ferrari days. The 2013 car was designed with the very advanced and good correlating Toyota wind tunnel and still the car wasn't aerodynamic wise the best car. I think we need a proven guy like Ross Brawn to sort things out at Ferrari. He should replace Dominicale as fast as possible.

[PadGeT]

No "Fire Stefano" in this thread plzz.

[DIEK]

PitLaneTalk ‏@pitlanetalk 2m
Our sources confirm Ferrari PU is overweight and down on power. Problem is mechanical. Which is bad news because of engine freeze. #F1

PitLaneTalk ‏@pitlanetalk
Ferrari can improve power delivery and fuel consumption with software. BHP deficit to Mercedes unrecoverable though until 2015. #F

[shamim179]

PitLaneTalk ‏@pitlanetalk 2m
Our sources confirm Ferrari PU is overweight and down on power. Problem is mechanical. Which is bad news because of engine freeze. #F1

PitLaneTalk ‏@pitlanetalk
Ferrari can improve power delivery and fuel consumption with software. BHP deficit to Mercedes unrecoverable though until 2015. #F

That's terrible news! Makes no sense as to why Ferrari were against the car weight increase. It's becoming clearer and clearer that we did a terrible job at developing this engine.

So:

Down on peak power
Overweight
Unstable power delivery
Not the most fuel efficient?

The only good thing about our engine is the small size and reliability although with reliability you have to see how it performs over the course of many races or an entire season so it's not a given that we are really good at that.

[Alonso14]

PitLaneTalk ‏@pitlanetalk 2m
Our sources confirm Ferrari PU is overweight and down on power. Problem is mechanical. Which is bad news because of engine freeze. #F1

PitLaneTalk ‏@pitlanetalk
Ferrari can improve power delivery and fuel consumption with software. BHP deficit to Mercedes unrecoverable though until 2015. #F

How reliable are PitLaneTalk?

And if all this is true - does this mean it's game over for us this season? I don't mean catching the Mercs, I mean in terms of having a podium here and there.

[PadGeT]

PitLaneTalk ‏@pitlanetalk 2m
Our sources confirm Ferrari PU is overweight and down on power. Problem is mechanical. Which is bad news because of engine freeze. #F1

PitLaneTalk ‏@pitlanetalk
Ferrari can improve power delivery and fuel consumption with software. BHP deficit to Mercedes unrecoverable though until 2015. #F

Can anyone clarify whats meant by mechanical problem here?

[Kiwi Nick]

Can anyone clarify whats meant by mechanical problem here?

I assume he means hardware. And, unfortunately, it is the hardware that is homologated.

[DIEK]

How reliable are PitLaneTalk?

And if all this is true - does this mean it's game over for us this season? I don't mean catching the Mercs, I mean in terms of having a podium here and there.

Only has 822 followers on twitter, so maybe not very much reliability...

[PURE PASSION]

I really can't believe that we mess it up so badly!!!!

[Rob]

I hope we are still not suffering from y250 vortex drag penalties like last season.

I am not sure if we are still not properly utilising the effect of underbody vortices. This makes us not make efficeient use the limited undertray to generate downforce. Afraid we arent properly using the vortices to seal the undertray and better control the flow direction to feed the diffuser. This was apparent is testing in Jerez, when we tried out two different iterations of diffuser.
This is where is think Red Bull are ahead at the moment. They run visibly high rake than any manufacturers.They are able to exploit the groundeffect D/F more than any other team.

that is last years car.

[JacKy]

Only has 822 followers on twitter, so maybe not very much reliability...

Agreed. Obviously we have problem with PU efficiency and overweith but only high ranked team member can know that if we can fix or not this year.

[PadGeT]

that is last years car.

I know, i have written "last season" haven't I?

[PURE PASSION]

On the other hand if it is true that we have unsolved issues, why Alo is even a little bit confibent and say that it is in our hands to catch even the Mercs??

[JacKy]

On the other hand if it is true that we have unsolved issues, why Alo is even a little bit confibent and say that it is in our hands to catch even the Mercs??

It's called as pollyanna

[Alonso14]

On the other hand if it is true that we have unsolved issues, why Alo is even a little bit confibent and say that it is in our hands to catch even the Mercs??

Given our history can he really come out and say without consequences that this season should be written off because our car does not have the potential to the catch the leaders?

[JacKy]

Sky Sports F1 2014: How Mercedes become so strong in 2014

[PadGeT]

Wow, they couldn't find any other car to compare that ugly mercedes with?
Typical of Sky!!!

[Alonso14]

Ferrari is the only other engine manufacturer who has a team in F1 so that was the obvious choice.

[zike]

Given our history can he really come out and say without consequences that this season should be written off because our car does not have the potential to the catch the leaders?

YES