Ferrari to pursue development of single-pillar wing on SF-23

Ferrari is sticking to the development of the single-pillar rear wing that appeared on its SF-23 in pre-season testing last month and over the Bahrain Grand Prix weekend.

The Scuderia designed the element to help clean up the airflow at the back of its car, but the team encountered a DRS issue when it was trialed on the final day of testing.

A week later in FP1, the wing was mounted on the back of Charles Leclerc's car but TV footage showed the element furiously oscillating which encouraged the team to replace it with its twin-pillar wing.

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Ferrari engineer Jock Clear said the problem was simply due to the young element's lack of testing.

"I think the double-pylon obviously is a carryover from last year, tried and trusted,” said the Briton.

"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."

Clear said there was no real timeframe for the team to iron out the wing's teething issues to be able to run the element during an full race weekend.

"I would have to refer to my composite colleagues and aero specialists to know exactly," he said.

"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.

"You can get 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.

"Nowadays, you get very little testing time. So we have to use these Fridays to test some bits. We've learned a lot from it.

"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, and we'll go back to the factory and improve it again. And once we're comfortable with it, it'll appear."

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