Do you remember when Aston Martin was struggling big time in 2022 with the introduction of ground effect and then they signed Dan Fallows from Red Bull, who turned the AMR23 into a car heavily inspired by RB18? Aston Martin was the second-quickest car for the first half of the season. And now, it seems that Ferrari is also going to take inspiration from Red Bull as the upgraded SF24 is set to adopt some Red Bull-styled upgrades.

At the start of the 2022 season, when the ground effect cars were introduced, three major design philosophies were followed by the grid. The Red Bull-style sidepod undercut, the Ferrari-style slide side pods, and the Mercedes Zeropod. Over the last three seasons, teams have experimented with a combination of these philosophies like the Aston Martin, which had a Red Bull-esque undercut but also the slide pods.

However, over time, most of the team designs have started to combine and the superior Red Bull design has been the inspiration behind many 2024 cars. Even Mercedes, who stuck with the zeropods for 2 seasons, moved away from the concept and introduced an undercut side pod in 2024. Ferrari has been the outlier in this, moving in their development direction. However, the SF24 does feature an RB19-style extended lower lip inlet.

As suggested by Formu1a.uno, Ferrari will bring its first major upgrade to the Imola GP rather than the Miami GP. The new upgrade package, also called the Ferrari 2.0, will feature a Red Bull RB20 style inlet, i.e. an extended upper lip of the inlet rather than the extended lower lip that was adopted by many teams this year, including the Aston Martin. A little tweak to the front wing is also rumored as of now but not confirmed.

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But what sort of improvement will the new upgrades bring? What does Ferrari expect out of them? 

Better load and efficiency: Ferrari’s expectations from the SF24 Imola Upgrades

The Imola upgrades will be one of the three major upgrades that the Scuderia will be bringing this year for the SF24. The sidepod upgrades will not be a direct copy of Red Bull but an interpretation of the same. Ferrari expects the upgrades to open up flexibility with the setup of the car. This in turn will help the engineers to get away with a more aggressive setup in variable conditions. 

As read on Formu1.uno, “If everything goes as it should and the performance continues to be consistent with expectations, the technicians expect an increase of 1 tenth of load and 1 and a half tenth of efficiency. The target is to broaden set-up options, which will be essential in qualifying. Having a more efficient load in the corners indirectly gives the technicians greater scope for more aggressive mechanical settings.”

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Do you think these upgrades will help Ferrari close the gap to Red Bull or even overtake them in terms of performance?