Formula 1’s radical new rules for the 2022 season not only caused the cars to look completely different, but also increased the weight of the single-seaters by 43kg over the winter, for a further 3kg (to 798kg). later. However, no team has yet managed to reach that minimum goal.
At the moment all the teams in the championship are trying to save weight in every possible way, as having 10kg of extra weight means an average of 0.3 seconds lost time per lap, about 18 or 20 seconds per race.
For Ferrari, who took a one-two finish in the opening race in Bahrain, this topic is also relevant, although not as critical as, for example, Red Bull. In the Maranello team, the disadvantage is not so great: according to experts, it is only a few kilograms.
Why? The answer lies in the design of the F1-75’s rear brakes. The Italians use brake discs of a smaller diameter than the maximum allowed by the rules.
For this season, due to the transition to new 18-inch tyres, the maximum diameter of the front brake discs has been increased from 278 to 328mm, while their thickness has remained the same at 32mm. At the rear, the changes affected both parameters: the diameter increased from 266 to 280 mm, and the thickness increased from 28 to 32.
These are the maximum values that teams usually take advantage of. Nonetheless, Ferrari decided that it was better to use brake discs of the maximum allowed size at the front, but not at the rear, using more compact 278mm discs which would suffice for the braking performance of the F1-75 . In addition, with that decision, they save a lot of weight.
It seems that 2 mm is not so much. However, the math deduces that the weight savings in this case is 1.5%. It is very important that the difference is in the unsprung masses: because the F1 engineers don’t like them, they try to minimize them at all times.
Of course, the gain itself is small compared to two-wheeled competitions, it will hardly be about 100 grams. However, this is one more example of how each Formula 1 team looks for advantages, no matter how small.
