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Ferrari SF90

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Ferrari SF90

The Ferrari SF90, also known by its internal name Project 670, is a Formula One racing car designed and constructed by Scuderia Ferrari to compete during the 2019 Formula One World Championship. The chassis was designed by Mattia Binotto, Enrico Cardile, Fabio Montecchi, and David Sanchez with Corrado Iotti leading the powertrain design. It was driven by Sebastian Vettel and Charles Leclerc, who was making his debut for Ferrari. The car made its competitive debut at the 2019 Australian Grand Prix.

Ferrari designed and constructed the SF90 as a Formula One car to compete during the 2019 Formula One World Championship. The car was driven by four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel and Ferrari debutant Charles Leclerc in every race of the 2019 season. Ferrari named the car the SF90 to celebrate the company's 90th anniversary and in keeping with tradition Vettel named his car "Lina".

The new regulations for the 2019 season meant that the teams had to adopt a new simpler front wing design and a higher and wider rear wing. Ferrari produced a radical front wing design that tapered downwards from the middle towards the endplates of the wing while Mercedes and Red Bull Racing, their nearest rivals with the Mercedes W10 and the Red Bull RB15, went with a conventional design that is high from middle to end. This design was meant to encourage flow around the tyres with the front wing being below the maximum allowed height. Ferrari's front wing design meant that the majority of the loading would be felt on the middle of the wing and this in turn would cause the air flow to be directed to within the front tyres. This design made the car's downforce levels more predictable, albeit with less downforce overall.

An anonymous aerodynamicist commented that because the front wing did not generate as much downforce as the front wings of some of its rival cars, Ferrari instead had to compensate and increase the size of their barge boards to provide this downforce. This in turn meant that the rear was unable to produce as much downforce as the front going forward in the development of the car. This was likely to lead to a car prone to oversteer, therefore it was anticipated that the SF90 would not be as fast as some of its rivals and the amount of downforce the car would produce would be limited.

Ferrari changed the engine cover on the SF90, making it smaller compared its predecessor, the Ferrari SF71H, in order to save weight and improve aerodynamics. Ferrari adopted a matte finish to the car's livery instead of gloss to save weight. The SF90 also had a reworked cooling system with the engine cover having a smaller inlet, now triangular rather than oval and the radiator air inlets were made larger. The rear bodywork was also remodeled suggesting an increase in rear aerodynamic performance.

Ferrari took a few upgrades to the first test. The most notable of these was the location of the exit for the air that would have come through the side pod. Instead of the traditional place of letting the air out of the rear of the car the SF90 redirected some of the air out behind the base of the halo. This would have two advantages, the first being that by bringing the air up there, it would help to generate extra downforce in the middle of the air and the second benefit would be that the SF90 would be able to manipulate the air flow to its rear wing. A second upgrade that Ferrari brought to the first test was with the wheel. The wheel rim was redesigned with holes in it to transfer heat away from the tyres thus keeping the tyres in their operating window. Although this innovation would not help with the SF90's outright pace it would allow the SF90 to take better care of its tyres therefore improving the cars' race pace.

After the first week of pre-season testing it was the SF90 which had the clear advantage having completed a high number of laps and with both Leclerc and Vettel commenting how comfortable they felt with the car. Although the SF90 finished in eighth and ninth after the first test they only used the harder and therefore slower tyres, when the times were adjusted to show predicted lap time had they all been on the same tyre it was predicted that the SF90 would have been the fastest.

At the Australian Grand Prix, the Ferraris lined up third and fifth, driven by Vettel and Leclerc, respectively. During the race, both cars suffered from a lack of overall pace compared to the two Mercedes cars, as well as the Red Bull of Max Verstappen. They finished in fourth and fifth places, respectively. At the Bahrain Grand Prix, Ferrari locked out the front row of the starting grid just as they had done the previous year, with Leclerc setting a new track record in the process. During the race, both cars suffered from issues: Vettel from driver errors and Leclerc with an engine problem that cost him the victory.

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