Ferrari’s “Aggressive” Car Changes Revealed 13-Days Ahead of Australian GP

Looking from the Ferrari lens, the first two races of the season have come with a mixed bag of feelings. The Italian team has secured two podiums so far. However, they’re still a few paces away from their goal of challenging for a race win and eventually the championship. The season opener was proof the SF-24 still has some areas of improvement. Despite the shortcomings, the Prancing Horse is faster than the entire grid, except for one team. Now, in order to catch the team in question, the team back in Maranello already has an “extreme” version ready, glimpses of which we will see in Australia.

According to reports, Ferrari is dissatisfied with the SF-24’s performance so far. In the first race, Charles Leclerc pointed out that “something was very wrong” with his car. He did secure a podium in Jeddah but there was a healthy distance between him and the two Red Bulls. In order to close this gap, Ferrari will introduce some upgrade packages, starting from the Australian GP.

The theme of the developmental path Ferrari will venture on is “aggressive”. According to reports, the SF-24 1.0 has served its purpose and given the engineers and the drivers excellent feedback. Now with all the available data Ferrari will introduce changes that will include and not be limited to the floor, the sidepods, and the bodywork.

This major overhaul will start taking shape from the Australian GP and will be complete in time for the race in Imola, barring any instances that might fast-track this timeline. The idea is to keep all the parts that work from the old car and replace/remove everything else that doesn’t. So by the Emilia Romagna GP, we might see a very different Ferrari SF-24 on the track. The “extreme” version so to speak.

The new look will have a new floor, sidepods, and bodywork. It will also have a more aggressive air intake after the initial version proved to be stable at high speeds in the first two races. The cooling was on point in the first phase. Now they will take more drastic actions based on these findings. Exciting few weeks if you’re a Ferrari fan or driver.

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It will be exciting to see how the mini-upgrade package performs in Australia and if it will give Leclerc or Carlos Sainz the push to fight at least one Red Bull. If they do find the pace, we might see a Ferrari that will make Red Bull sweat, at least in the constructor’s championship.

Charles Leclerc becomes the ultimate team player as he keeps Ferrari first

In their Ferrari tenure, so far, Sainz and Leclerc have locked horns once and it was during the Italian GP. The two made every Ferrari fan sweat with their wheel-to-wheel action in Monza. However, even that scenario did not put a dent in their relationship. When asked about their relationship and approach for the 2024 season, keeping in mind Sainz’s non-existent future at the team, Leclerc gave an extremely mature answer.

He said, “No, I think we are always trying to fight on the limit, obviously keeping in mind that Ferrari comes first and we cannot take unnecessary risks. Again, on my side, I wasn’t really in a position to be fighting properly, as we had quite a bit of issues to manage. And that’s what we’ve done in the years we have been competing together. But I don’t remember any time where it went as far of having a problem between us. So that is a good thing and it should stay that way. But I have no doubt on that. We have also a very good relationship outside the car, so we are very open and very honest with ourselves, so we have this discussion very often. So yeah, it’s all about finding the right balance, but I think we did.”

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It’s a side of Leclerc we don’t see often but we are glad it exists. This approach and attitude will pay dividends if and when the SF-24 can match the RB20’s pace. Let’s see if that ever happens.