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Ferrari wind tunnel improvements

Ferrari rip up wind tunnel floor during summer shut down

22 August at 10:00
  • Ben Stevens
  • Editor

Formula 1 returns to Zandvoort this weekend after a month-long summer shutdown. Scuderia Ferrari took this time to renovate their wind tunnel at Maranello before Lewis Hamilton joins the team in 2025. 

Ferrari rip up wind tunnel floor 

During the summer shutdown, F1 teams are forced to stop working on the development of their current cars for two weeks. In this time, teams are also forced to close their wind tunnel. However, Ferrari used this shutdown to upgrade the floor of their wind tunnel, which used to be metal before it was upgraded to a new floor made of innovate materials. 

This new floor also includes an advanced roller that the tyres of the car will rest on and will rotate at the same speed as the air moving through the tunnel. This should fix Ferrari's previous issues, with the old metal roller causing a lot of wear to Pirelli's tyres. Teams only get allocated ten sets of tyres to use for wind tunnel tests, so with this new roller the Italian team should be able to obtain more data from their tyre sets. 

This new version of the floor will also allow Ferrari to experiment more with the ride height of the SF-24 and future cars, with the old floor limiting the extent that they could lower the car too. If the ride height was too low, the skid block could damage the old roller, but this should no longer be the case.

Ferrari had started 2024 strongly winning in Australia and Monaco, however, since bringing an upgrade to Barcelona the team have struggled. Since Leclerc won his home race, they have scored just one podium, with Carlos Sainz finishing P3 in Austria.