With one win so far this season, Ferrari is certainly off to a good start to the season. The fact is, however, that Red Bull nevertheless has an advantage and Ferrari wants to make up part of the gap with Red Bull with a major update during the F1 race in Imola.
According to the Italian ‘Gazzetta dello Sport’, Ferrari wants to introduce such a major update during the Emilia-Romagna GP that there is actually almost a B specification of the current car, the SF-24.
Ferrari’s aerodynamics team, led by Diego Tondi, is said to have found an important and unexpected performance improvement. Ferrari would adopt the concept of the air intakes from the Red Bull RB20 on the SF-24. It is striking that the introduction of the concept comes after several new engineers who previously worked at Red Bull have started working at Ferrari and can now actually start working at Ferrari after a so-called ‘gardening leave’. They were of course able to bring with them knowledge about concepts at Red Bull.
After some smaller updates in recent races, the update introduced in Imola would be the first really major update of the season. Ferrari previously stated that they would develop the SF-24 in three major phases. To what extent this major update will contribute to closing the gap with Red Bull, we will only find out in Imola.