Analysing the myriad of upgrades applied at the Imola Grand Prix

Red Bull: what's behind a messy weekend despite victory 

Red Bull faced one of their most difficult weekends since the beginning of the year. The team brought a new floor and a new front wing last weekend, in line with the development plan established at the beginning of the year. The floor showed some changes both in the floor edge area and in the fairing area around the lower SIS. Regarding the floor edge, the vortex generators placed below the inclined element have been redesigned to push the turbulence from the front tyres outwards, preventing them from interfering with the flow that flows under the car.

Furthermore, the casing of the SIS sunk in the bottom has also been completely redesigned: as shown by the red arrows in the drawing below, the new bottom has a much more pronounced step-shaped fairing compared to the previous version, in line with the solutions also adopted from McLaren and Aston Martin. This is useful for creating a small "channel" that pushes the wake of the front tyres directly towards the pavement of the floor.

This new fairing shows an attachment point close to the upper lip of the Venturi channels inlet, proof that the engineers tried to divide the airflow into two channels (one towards the floor edge and one towards the undercut and the upper part of the floor) as soon as possible, to avoid "dirtying" the flow destined towards the rear of the car.

Moving on to the front wing, the last two flaps and the endplate have been completely redesigned. As regards the third and fourth flaps, they now show an increased chord from the attachment portion, near the nose support, up to half their length (red arrows). This new design aims to increase the local load generated by the front wing (especially at high speeds) and, simultaneously, increase the flow rate of air towards the bodywork. The changes to the endplate (blue arrows), however, consist of a different design of the carbon profile useful for increasing the outwash effect, i.e. pushing the air outside the front wheel, in order to reduce the drag produced by the airfoil itself. 

All these changes were expected to increase the amount of local downforce generated, improving the car, especially at high speeds.

Despite the new parts seemed to be working as expected already in FP1, the RB20 seemed undrivable on Friday: both during FP1, in fact, Verstappen complained a lot about the unpredictability of the car in different corners, with the balance shifting from oversteer while braking to understeer at the apex of slow corners, especially in the qualifying simulations, when the car is quite light. 

This issue was mainly related to two factors: the mechanical set-up and the track layout. For what concerns the mechanical set-up of the car, the RB20 is a car set to run at low ride heights and stiff from a suspension point of view (even though the team made a great step forward compared to the RB19 from this point of view). This choice brought an advantage in fast corners, like Piratella or Villneuve, where the stiff system stabilized the car and allowed it to generate a high level of downforce,  but it was not ideal for slow corners and chicanes. Moreover, the bumpy asphalt, together with the high kerbs required a very soft mechanical set-up, which could also help put the tyres into the right operating window. In fact, the suspension system is softened, and the tyre absorbs the roughness of the ground better, generating greater friction and heating up more.

That’s exactly what the technical team at Red Bull worked on between Friday and Saturday: to improve the car’s behaviour, especially at Acque Minerali and Variante Alta, the team decided to give up a bit of aero-mechanical stability in fast corners to improve the way the RB20 absorbed the kerbs. Moreover, they also adopted a slightly lower downforce rear wing to the one they used on Friday, to increase their top speed, which they know could’ve been a right help during the race. As a direct consequence, the RB20 seemed a little less nervous on kerbs during qualifying, but the stint on the hard tyres during Sunday’s race showed that the problems had not been completely resolved. 

During the first stint on the medium tyres, Verstappen had no competitors: the RB20 behaved very well on the medium tyre and at a high fuel, despite having a stiffer mechanical set-up than McLaren and competitors. This factor turned out to be a crucial advantage during the first stint, as it helped Max to keep the front and rear tyres into the right working window, avoiding overheating (which compromised Norris’ first stint). However, when a harder compound was fit on the RB20, the other side of the coin was shown: the car struggled a lot to wake up the fronts (due to the lower friction generated on the tyre) with Verstappen suffering from understeer in all slow speed corners. 

This problem kept on getting worse, as the Dutch World Champion expressed after the race: “Yeah, I just couldn't really get the tyres to work. It just felt like they were not operating in the right temperature window, and that just got worse and worse. The last 15 laps for me was like driving on ice. They were not responding anymore, so that's something that we have to analyse."

Having a look at the other side of the garage, Perez’s weekend is the confirmation that Verstappen really played a crucial role in Imola and that the team must work to understand what didn’t work and fix it in time for Monaco, where making the car work at high ride heights and with a super soft mechanical set-up will be crucial to wake up the front tyres during qualifying. 

McLaren with the fastest car during the weekend

Coming on to McLaren, it’s not an absurd saying that they had the fastest car during the Imola Grand Prix weekend. The team lead by Andrea Stella did a perfect job setting up the car on a circuit very selective on the mechanics (as shown by Red Bull). 

The updated MCL38 introduced in Miami showed to have a bigger operating window and was a big improvement both in terms of top speed and of “efficient load” generated by the Venturi channels. The Woking based team, in fact, decided to adopt a very skinny rear wing since Friday (the same spec they used last time out in Miami) and the car proved to be extremely competitive in all sectors: the medium-low downforce rear wing ensured high top speeds both at DRS opened and closed, while the very soft mechanical set-up allowed both Piastri and Norris to be aggressive on kerbs without the car sliding when coming off. Moreover, the great amount of downforce generated by the Venturi channels and the bodywork of the car allowed the MCL38 to be very quick in fast corners, one of its strengths since the very beginning of the season. 

All these factors had a very positive impact on both drivers’ pace throughout the weekend, since they challenged Verstappen both for pole on Saturday and for the win on Sunday. During qualifying, in fact, the MCL38's great ability to heat the tyres meant that the car was competitive in all sectors, while during the race, the performance was not always there, despite the great driving by both Piastri and Norris. 

Just opposite to what happened to Verstappen, Norris struggled a lot from overheating during his first stint on the medium tyres: this is probably a small weak point McLaren has not yet solved, but only shows up with the softest compound of tyres. As underlined by the British driver himself in the post race interview: “I basically changed all my switches on the steering wheel to try and help the rear tyres and try to kill the fronts, because I just had too much front at that point. And maybe five, 10 laps later, things started to come back to me. So making all these changes and changing the differential and the brake balance and all of those things really allowed me to kind of bring the tyres back into a good window.”

Despite this, once he put on the hardest tyres, he was the quickest on track, demonstrating that the updated MCL38 handles much better tyres and can really challenge Red Bull in the race distance. 

This weekend, together with last time out in Miami, it was the icing on the cake of the hard work the team have been doing since the beginning of 2023: McLaren have been able to take advantage of their perfect correlation between simulation (wind tunnel, CFD…) and track, to bring big upgrade packages at a very high rate during last year, improving by a handful of tenths every time new parts were fit on the car. Moreover, the technical department's great ability in developing a good basis for the MCL38 during the winter, allowed them to make a great step forward and eventually be at the same level (or even better) of Red Bull after Miami upgrades. These two factors can’t be taken for granted, as they could play a very important role in the development battle both this year and especially in 2025. 

Ferrari's hidden step forward 

Finally, a brief mention must be given to praise Ferrari’s performance too. Despite what could seem as a “disappointing” result for the Italian Tifosi on home soil, the Maranello based team showed a very good step forward with the new package they introduced last weekend.  

A detailed analysis is already available, but let’s try to describe how the new parts improved the SF-24 behaviour. Since the beginning of this year, the SF-24 had two main weaknesses: slow speed corners and traction and struggled to wake up the tyres in qualifying. Although the latter issue doesn’t seem to have been completely solved, the SF-24 EVO has been able to improve the car's behaviour at low speed in a very similar way as McLaren did after they introduced their Miami spec. 

The new parts on the Ferrari, especially the floor and the new sidepods, had the main goal to increase the amount of downforce generated by the Venturi channels and bodywork of the car, improving car’s stability at high speeds and increasing the level of load always available at different height rides. Having more downforce available allowed the engineers to soften the mechanical set-up a bit, improving the way the car absorbed kerbs and behaved in traction.

That’s exactly what we saw on track this weekend: the SF-24 looked very quick in sectors 2 and 3, where both Sainz and Leclerc had a car that absorbed the bumps really well and was also very quick in fast corners. Moreover, the added load also helped in the tyre management on Sunday’s race, with Leclerc who had a very strong pace both on the mediums and on the hard tyres. Despite this, the team went on using the same medium  downforce rear wing they’ve been using since Bahrain, which didn’t help Leclerc in attacking Norris, as he underlined in the usual post race press conference: “I was in a very awkward gap to Lando where you don't get the benefits of the DRS, but you are just losing in corners, which at the beginning of the stint with the Hard, with our pace advantage, I could get within DRS.” 

His words underline that there was a very little pace difference among the two teams, even though McLaren seemed still in front. 

Only Monaco will give us a clearer idea whether the problems in slow speed corners have been actually solved, but for sure qualifying will play a crucial role there and the team will need to do the best work possible to improve this aspect, as qualifying will be crucial in the Principality. Beyond this, the full value of the package brought in Imola is yet to be discovered: as happened to McLaren, when such a big package is introduced, it naturally takes time for the engineers to fully understand it and know how the car responds to the new bits. As a consequence, it’ll be possible to evaluate the real progress only in the next 3 or 4 races, even though the flashes shown this weekend (only a 2 tenths in qualifying and only 6 seconds behind Verstappen on Sunday) are proof that the taken path is the right one and that, once the full potential of the SF-24 EVO will be unlocked, Ferrari will be there together with McLaren and Red Bull. 

In conclusion, the Imola Grand Prix offered one of the most exciting (both on track and on a technical point of view) weekends of the last year and a half, with Red Bull, McLaren and Ferrari all fighting both in qualifying and in the race. The hook to Red Bull has taken place and, from now on, all three teams will be pushing hard to end the weekend on the top step on the podium.