Ferrari back on track with four-day Fiorano test with 2021 car

RaceFans Round-up

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In the round-up: Ferrari will take to the track with a four-day private test, including both its race drivers, using last year’s SF21

In brief

Ferrari return to track with four day SF21 Fiorano test

Ferrari will run their 2021 car once more after announcing they would begin a four day private test at their Fiorano test track today.

Ferrari academy driver Robert Shwartzman will start the test today, with race drivers Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz Jnr sharing driving responsibilities in the car. Shwartzman will conclude the test on the Friday.

Over recent seasons, teams have been barred under the regulations from running tests using cars that were built to either the current or the previous year’s regulations. However teams will be allowed to use year-old cars this season due to the drastic change in rules for 2022.

“The difference is that if you look at the sporting regulations now, it is considered a ‘previous’ car, also a car from 2021,” explained Pirelli’s head of motorsport Mario Isola at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix last month. “In the past, the car from the year before was still considered a ‘current’ car.

“But because of the big change in technical regulations; next year, the only current cars will be the 2022 cars and the 2023 cars – not 2021. That means that we will continue to supply what we call driver academy tyres, that are different from race tyres. They are available in three different compounds, plus wet, and they can use them for any test with 13-inch [wheels] with previous cars.”

Codemasters patch excessive AI corner speed in F1 2021

A new patch released for F1 2021 claims to have fixed a frustrating issue with the game’s AI which players have been asking developers Codemasters to address since its launch in July.

AI drivers in the game appeared to have more high-speed grip through specific sections of circuits in the game, allowing them to take corners such as Pouhon at Spa-Francorchamps, turn seven at Zandvoort and the final corner of the Red Bull Ring much faster than players are able to with the game’s physics simulation.

Codemasters released the v1.15 patch for the game yesterday, coinciding with the new season of the Podium Pass which begins today. The developers say that the AI car performance has been adjusted specifically in those three corners, but there has been no confirmation whether other high-speed sections such as Copse at Silverstone have been altered.

The new patch adds other functionality to the game. For the first time players can race their own avatar and custom team in the Grand Prix mode outside of the My Team career mode. Players can choose to race any track in the game with their My Team car using any 2021 Formula 2 driver as their team mate, or one of the seven ‘legend’ drivers if they have purchased the privilege.

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Comment of the day

Carlos Sainz Jnr may have ranked lower than Ferrari team mate Charles Leclerc in RaceFans driver ranking for 2021, but @geemac believes his is a talent that often flies under the radar…

Carlos Sainz has managed to master the art of very quietly being a bloody good grand prix driver. I swear there is a moment in every single grand prix when I look at the leaderboard and say to myself “Sainz is having a blinder here and he’s not been mentioned in commentary once”. He had a very, very solid season in 2021 and I can see him going from strength to strength next season.
@geemac

Happy birthday!

Happy birthday to Mouse_Nightshirt, Taimur, Dylan Lopez, Danny Brennan and Lalit Palaparthy!

Author information

Will Wood
Will has been a RaceFans contributor since 2012 during which time he has covered F1 test sessions, launch events and interviewed drivers. He mainly...

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23 comments on “Ferrari back on track with four-day Fiorano test with 2021 car”

  1. I wish the people at William Advanced Engineering best of luck. For the sake of the people who work there, I hope that none of the folks from FMG (also known as Frequently Moving Goalposts) or the nascent Fortesque Future Industries (FFI) dont get involved in the running of the company!

    1. @jaymenon10 have you got links to more information?

      Of late, it seems that Twiggy has been making some good moves. This seems to align with his general business direction, so I’m curious as to what issues there might be so I have a more complete picture.

      1. @justrhysism

        From I know via the general fraternity of engineering consultants in town, it cant be said they aren’t run particularly well, hence the joke Frequently Moving Goalpost! haha Digging ore out of the ground is challenging for various reasons, but dealing with complex electronics and plant aren’t exactly in the wheelhouse….but then again, what do I know?

        However, we don’t know what the terms are with this WAE deal. Twiggy wants to make his entire mining fleet diesel free by 2030, so I guess they’ll let WAE get on with their business and not interfere. Judging by what is going on in his Future Industries company, I hope the leave WAE alone.

        1. @jaymenon10 presumably the purchase is for direct access to the battery tech without the need to pay a premium at “retail”.

          Seems like a good way to gain IP rather than going it alone.

          Will watch with intrigue.

  2. That Bild article is infuriating, why do journo’s think celebrities owe them anything? Being popular doesn’t rescind your right to privacy. Framing their ridicule as being on behalf of the fans is even more antagonising. Their profit-driven motives are far from the support and adoration that a fan-base provides.

    9 seconds into that Albert Park video and the most memorable moment I have is seeing the megaphones at the main gate telling people to go home an hour after gates were supposed to be opened on Saturday. I still won’t believe it’s happening until the cars are leaving pit lane for qualifying, all it will take is another new strain of covid just before the weekend to shut it all down.

    1. They’re playing the same game therefore I can’t care less about what tabloids write about celebs.

    2. @skipgamer Yeah, I have two friends trying to re-enter two different states and the way the rules change, and the uncertainty, rightly or wrongly, means if I was to place a bet of Melbourne happening, I’d still be minded to say it won’t. Cases in Victoria and the ever changing situation means I can see someone thinking ‘sod it, lets just go to Imola or check if there’s any GT races booked for Hockenheim, we’ll go there instead, or people liked Istanbul, what about that?’.

      To get from London to Perth is costing $10k (flights are $5k), if you want to get into WA before 5th February (when the rules change again), obviously thats WA not Victoria. My friend has just realised in a Darwin hotel room that you’re not allowed any alcohol. She has two weeks with one book and no booze (she’s not particularly into the book and finds this a grim situation). Then she has to quarantine for two weeks in Perth (so a month all up). And then, having fed the dog, figure out a way to get back to London (whatever restrictions permitting).

      If Kimi was on the grid this year, he’d probably have just said ‘nope, I want my drink’.

      Not a critiquing of Australia’s response, there’s seems to be less dead people, and I’m not qualified to say. I can just see someone thinking ‘not worth it’. I imagine if the people behind Albert Park had the finances of China, they’d take the same approach. “It’ll happen when it can happen, until then, we’ll not bother for a bit”.

      1. Most international flights are entering Sydney at the moment @bernasaurus – and NSW doesn’t require any quarantine at all. Only a test. Melbourne is gradually becoming more open.
        As for Perth – getting in to WA, even from neighbouring states with very low infection rates, has been nightmare for the best part of 2 years. So almost nobody bothers any more.
        They might be keeping their infection rate down for now, but it’s inevitable that they’ll have to deal with it some time.

    3. @skipgamer, I see what you mean, but for me, the build-up process (which begins next Tuesday as scheduled) is enough, as this wouldn’t start without being fully confident about avoiding stumbling blocks.
      Victoria doesn’t require quarantine for fully vaccinated arrivals after all & I doubt this approach changes.
      @bernasaurus

    4. @skipgamer

      why do journo’s think celebrities owe them anything?

      Payback for services rendered. See this round up where Monfils’ opinion is treated as more valuable than the opinion of billions of other people for no reason other than to appeal to human irrationality (like the halo effect).

      In a better world, celebrity opinions outside of their area of expertise (which is primarily tennis, in the case of Monfils) would be given as much weight as the opinion of any other random person. We do not live in that world.

      Framing their ridicule as being on behalf of the fans is even more antagonising.

      It is an affectation adopted by nearly all journalists to claim to uphold certain high minded ideals and deny the selfish motives that explain their behavior much better.

  3. What are Ferrari testing with a 2021 car? Are there loopholes where they can fit 2022 parts on it?

    1. Drivers have had 2 months out of the car. Practice procedures. Early rust removal. Practice never stops!

      You don’t want to turn up at the first test even the slightest it rusty on things.

      1. That would make perfect sense if there was no cost cap. But unless this is exempt for some reason (?), it is weird that Ferrari is willing to spend precious money on making sure Shwartzman isn’t rusty, especially considering how stingy the top teams are being otherwise.

        1. What does it cost them?
          Ferrari own their own circuit and their employees are all still working anyway. They also get their fuel for free from Shell, and the demonstration tyres are (in F1 terms) an inconsequential cost – but it’s well worth it to get the drivers back into the right mindset for when they jump into the new car.

          1. @S Nothing. Doing this on their backyard track takes nothing away from other stuff.
            @aesto

          2. They also get their fuel for free from Shell

            Those freebies are probably still included at some cost under the cost cap.

            Would be embarrassing if Ferrari runs out of funds at the end of the 2022 season and cannot fill up both cars ;)

    2. The part of the puzzle that burns the petrol

    3. @x1znet
      Since 2020, Ferrari have been investing a lot into upgrading the tools and structures it uses to design and develop a F1 car. A lot of work was carried to adjust the correlation between the wind tunnel and CFD which improved a lot this season.

      A new simulator, developed by the Bristol-based firm Dynisma (created in 2017 and run by former Ferrari engineer Ash Warne), which they started using at the end of the season for calibration purposes to be ready to develop the 2022 car. They will also rely on AWS’s powerful capabilities (advanced analytics, machine learning, AI…) that will enable them to run greater simulations faster than ever before to quickly gain insights into the design and performance of their car.

      These kind of tests done at their factory track in Fiorano will help them validate the new tools that must be working error free starting next season because they cannot afford anymore to throw resources on wind tunnel, simulation, CFD… issues. Every penny must be spent to develop the car.

  4. I immediately recognized the go-karting place (which is in Madrid) as I was there a month ago.
    Unlucky timing, I wasn’t simultaneously with an F1 driver, though, but oh well.

    I agree with COTD.

  5. I’d just like to point something out about that Tom Henderson tweet regarding the Gran Turismo 7 release – that account is a known leak hound with a habit of pulling leaks from thin air and covering his butt when nothing transpires on the dates he states.

    Since we have GT7 marketing videos from as recent as the last week with Kazunori Yamauchi quite literally quoting the March 4th release date, I think we are beyond the point of a reasonable delay.

    It’s an understandable mistake in the quagmire world of internet games journalism but please don’t feed these baseless Twitter hypemen by circulating their fabricated nothings – Polyphony and Sony will tell us quite clearly as they always do when they intend to show us a bit more gameplay or release buildup.

  6. Wow, Formula E’s marketing is out of this world, and not in a good way…

  7. That Formula E trailer is goofy, and does nothing to dispel the idea that their cars are ridiculously slow. Like, wouldn’t you want your cars (in a commercial about how cool your series is) to be faster than some guy on horseback or doing parkour through the city?

    Maybe I just missed the point…

    1. Let alone they must be even more slack than F1 with track limits then…
      There has been a race with someone running past the finish line to complete a race before though at least:

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