The Ferrari SF-24 has finally made its track debut following its unveiling earlier today.
Carlos Sainz has completed the first laps aboard the Ferrari SF-24 following the official reveal of the new Scuderia challenger at Maranello on Tuesday.
Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc revealed the new 2024 Ferrari in a brief online launch event as the team hopes the car will at least put them in the running to challenge Red Bull for race victories this season.
The new car still sports the matte red colour scheme although there are fewer black accents and more white and yellow longitudinal stripes instead of black. Currently, the wheel covers match the car’s red colour, and the inner rim has been trimmed with white and yellow stripes.
Shortly after the launch, Sainz drove the Ferrari SF-24 for the first shakedown laps at Fiorano, the team’s internal test track as Leclerc later took the wheel for a couple of laps himself.
As of this season, teams have the opportunity to run up to 200 km with their current cars twice a year, which is double the 100 km they were allowed to run during filming days and shakedown runs over the previous season.
It is claimed by the Italian website Formu1a.uno that the Scuderia will finish the 200km filming day granted to them on Wednesday, after only completing a 15km shakedown between the two drivers on Tuesday.
About the Ferrari SF-24 itself, team principal Fred Vasseur believes the team is trying to maximize their options within the confines of F1’s present set of regulations.
“Revolution – I don’t know if it is the right word because we have the same regulation now three years in a row that you can’t change massively the situation,” Vasseur said.
“Again, it’s a matter of tenths of seconds. It means it’s all 0.1 or 0.2 per cent performance that we are looking for. It’s not five [per cent]. For sure, we have to do a step. I don’t underestimate the step.
“We are changing 95 per cent of the components of the car. Perhaps you can consider that it’s a revolution.”
According to Ferrari Technical Director Enrico Cardile, the SF-24 is an entirely new redesign of the outfit’s previous machine, leveraging on feedback and lessons learnt during the previous year to improve the car which they think is “easier to drive.”
“With the Ferrari SF-24 we wanted to create a completely new platform and in fact, every area of the car has been redesigned,” Cardile said.
“Even if our starting point was the development direction we adopted last year and which saw us take a leap forward in terms of competitiveness in the final part of the season.
“We have taken on board what the drivers told us and turned those ideas into engineering reality, with the aim of giving them a car that’s easier to drive and therefore easier to get the most out of and push it to its limits.
“We did not set ourselves any design constraints other than that of delivering a strong and honest racing car, which can reproduce on the race track what we have seen in the wind tunnel.”
