Racing
© fuji.tim
Ferrari has brought its second major upgrade package of the season to the Spanish Grand Prix, centering its push on a heavily reworked front wing and revised floor in an attempt to cut a 79-point championship gap to Mercedes.
Barcelona is the first decisive test of the SF-26 development path, with Ferrari aiming to turn a lighter Miami evolution into a more meaningful gain in outright pace. The team believes the car’s core concept is still valid, but it has needed more aerodynamic efficiency and better balance to move closer to the benchmark it continues to identify in Mercedes.
The most visible change is a new front wing that reworks almost every area of the assembly. Ferrari has adopted a more complex lateral element that is shorter than the Miami version and now incorporates a new horizontal vane, or diveplane, while also adding a more compact flow diverter at the rear of the footplate. Underneath, the team has reshaped the wing to alter load distribution across the flaps, reducing load in the inner section under the nose, increasing chord through the middle, and then thinning the outer area again near the lateral element.
The goal is to strengthen the outwash effect, pushing airflow away from the front tires while also feeding cleaner air toward the T-Tray and the floor’s Venturi tunnels. Ferrari has also introduced a new activation mechanism for the active wing as part of the Barcelona package.
That direction follows comments from Lewis Hamilton in a June 10 article, when he pointed to the front wing as one area where Ferrari might be losing ground. Hamilton said: “Mercedes, McLaren and Red Bull are doing something different from us with the front wing. I don’t know if the gap is necessarily there, but I wonder what effect it has, because the others seem to have it and they have improved.”
The wing changes are only part of the overhaul. Ferrari has also added a new micro flow deflector in the sideboard area to tackle the balance problems that have hurt the SF-26 since the start of the season, and it has remodeled the floor, especially ahead of the rear wheels, to stop turbulence from the rear tires upsetting the diffuser.
The floor revision includes cuts in the underbody and oblique crosswise recesses that direct high-pressure air from above the floor downward. As that air mixes with the low-pressure flow underneath, it creates small vortices along the inner face of the rear tire. Ferrari’s aim is to use those vortices as a barrier to seal the floor edge and prevent rear-wheel turbulence from spilling into the diffuser.
An aerodynamician explained the principle to F1i: “If there were no notches in the floor, a large vortex would hit the tire, which would not be very helpful. What we are trying to do with these cuts is bring the vortex inward in order to capture the turbulence coming from the edge of the tire, which tends to want to enter the diffuser. These notches allow us to direct a strong vortex to seal the diffuser.”
Ferrari’s first evolution in Miami delivered most of what the team expected, according to AutoRacer, but it did not cure all of the car’s weaknesses. That is why Barcelona matters more. This package is meant to show whether Ferrari can do more than add incremental performance and whether the SF-26 can finally begin to close the gap to Mercedes on a true reference circuit.