Veteran Ferrari engineer Jock Clear has revealed that the single-pillar rear wing that they trialled during pre-season testing and during Free Practice 1 at the Bahrain Grand Prix last weekend is something the Italians likely “want to pursue”, with it set to be seen again this season.
Ferrari shocked the paddock during testing and during FP1 by running a single-pillar rear wing, which certainly didn’t appear to be the most stable, resulting in it quickly being swapped for a standard twin-pylon wing in FP1.
Despite its oscillation issues, Clear has revealed that it’ll “probably appear again”, with the Italians having identified some positives with the radical design.
“I think the double-pylon obviously is a carryover from last year, tried and trusted,” Clear said, as reported by Motorsport.com.
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“And the single didn’t really come into development until later in the year, in fact very late in the year, maybe the last month of development.
“So it’s fairly young. It’s a development that’s just a step forward on the rear wing really. Obviously getting down to a mono pillar just cleans up the flow to the bottom of the main plane.
“So it’s just providing a bit more juice. But like everything, we need to get it on the car and check it all out. And we did that at the test, and we did it again here, and it’s just an ongoing development really.
“So nothing amazing about it. But it’s probably something that we want to pursue, what we’ve seen so far is positive. So it’ll probably appear again.”
Whilst the rear wing will likely feature again during an FP1 session, Ferrari aren’t in a position to use it full-time, with Clear admitting that it’s “difficult to say” when it’ll be ready for permanent use.
“Difficult to say, I would have to refer to my composite colleagues and aero specialists to know exactly,” Clear added.
“But it’s one of those things where actually it’s very difficult to get that sort of mode of vibration replicated in the wind tunnel.
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“You can get the loads out of it, but all the stiffnesses actually have to be reflected in the real size. So that’s why we’ve had to go to the car, we put it on the car.
“And of course, nowadays, you get very little testing time. So we have to use these Fridays to test some bits. So as I say, it’s just a normal development. And we’ve learned a lot from it. And we’ve got the videos, we’ve got the sensors on it, it will tell us how much movement there is now.
“It’s obviously improved from last week to this week. And we’ll go back to the factory and improve it again. And once we’re comfortable with it, it’ll appear.”