Ferrari F10 technical lowdown

Date published : 28 Jan 2010 - 15:24:44

The pressure is on Ferrari to deliver after a poor 2009 season by its lofty standards, and on Thursday the Italian squad unveiled the car it hopes will revive its fortunes, the F10.Chief designer Nikolas Tombazis talked through the key features of the new machine in an interview on Ferrari's website, transcribed below.For the new F10 we had to review the whole car, from the nose to the rear wing, for two main reasons: the substantial changes in some of the rules and because we had to recover an obvious performance deficit we had last year compared to our competitors.We had to make the car longer to fit the bigger [fuel] tank, and we had to review the car's front end because the tyres are different.And perhaps more importantly, we also had to revise the car's rear axle to exploit the double diffuser as much as possible.In this area we worked a lot in the aerodynamics department, trying to exploit and widen the diffuser making it more efficient, improving the airflow underneath the car and therefore the downforce.We worked on the front end first to improve the airflow to the main bodywork. That's why we raised the car's nose and modified the floor, in order to improve the airflow towards the more efficient diffuser.The front wing was revised to improve the vortex flows towards the rear axle.Because of the rules we had to get rid of the static flange on the outside of the wheels. These appendages had a very important aerodynamic effect, and trying to recover this performance was hard work.The front suspension has been aligned with the vortex flow from the front wing, so I'd say that although the front end has some similarities to the previous car, it has been completely revised.As far as the centre of the car is concerned, we slightly narrowed the inlets in order to improve still further the flow around the car and underneath the car towards the diffuser.In terms of the aerodynamics, further back we have one of the car's key developments.Last year we weren't able to build a diffuser that was efficient enough, because the car hadn't been planned from the start for something like that; and in fact the F2009's gearbox was too wide, so we weren't able to exploit the double diffuser as much as we would have liked to.This year we completely revised the gearbox and made it smaller, so there's more space for the diffuser, [and] we also worked on the rear suspension.Some of the internal parts of this narrower gearbox had to be redesigned; building an efficient, reliable and sufficiently rigid gearbox was an important task.So the area which is visually very different from last year's car is around the diffuser which, due to the mechanical work and [changes to] the gearbox and the suspension, is now bigger.Due to the work on the diffuser, we had to review the flow to the rear wheels, where various appendages are different from those on the F2009.I think that the rear wing was the most gradual evolution from last year's car. There are changes: the shape is definitely different, but this might not be visible.The front and rear suspension have been revised in order to help the car's aerodynamics and improve the car's grip.The front suspension has been changed regarding the pneumatics when the wheel rolls over bumps on the track surface. We revised the dampers and the internal parts of the suspension.The rear suspension had some kinetic changes because we understood the tyres better and we wanted to make them more efficient. We worked hard in this area with the simulator to find the best compromise.The chassis had to be revised in order to fit the much bigger tank, which was something we had to solve during the planning phase.As far as the fuel tank is concerned, we had to review the suction lift because when a tank is that big you want to use every cubic centimetre of petrol that you can.You don't want to find any petrol in the tank at the end of the race you want to use it all. So we had to review our fuel system.But the bigger tank led to an inflated chassis, laterally and to the rear, and so we had to deal with a longer and wider chassis.Because the chassis is wider we had to study a new cooling system, because if we had moved the radiators further out the car would have been too wide and we would have lost too much aerodynamic performance.So we had to review the layout and configuration of the radiators.Obviously the [larger fuel tank] is the main reason why the car is longer than the previous one.Naturally also the weight distribution had an influence on the car's layout. We are using new tyres and they need a different weight distribution.This had an influence not only on the ballast housing, but also on the position of the front and rear wheels to distribute the weight equally.