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# Ferrari’s wing weakness – Mark Hughes’ tech snapshots
- URL: https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/ferraris-wing-weakness-mark-hughes-tech-snapshots/
- Published: 2020-02-11T10:22:56.000Z
- Updated: 2023-09-16T19:41:54.000Z
- Description: Ahead of the 2020 Formula 1 car launches, Mark Hughes has been assessing the issues each team needs to address from their 2019 designs – starting with Ferrari
- Author: Matt Beer
- Tags: Formula 1, #image-bottom-center

**Ahead of the 2020 Formula 1 car launches, Mark Hughes has been assessing the issues each team needs to address from their 2019 designs.**

**Ferrari is the next to unveil its new design on Tuesday evening. It gained a lot of attention for taking a different path to its main rivals in response to last year’s rule changes, but that choice ended up causing its race day problems.**

The significant changes to last year’s aero regulations, specifically those that simplified the front wing endplates and limited the number of under-nose vanes, diverted Ferrari from what had been a very productive path since 2017.

The aero department prioritised keeping a good outwash around the front wheels and so unloaded the outboard tips of the wing – and developed the whole aero concept of the car around that.

Others, specifically Mercedes and Red Bull, found that there was a way of maintaining adequately good outwash and still enjoying the greater peak load given by loading those outboard tips with full-depth elements.

It gave Ferrari a car with a weak front end, often to the extent that the race team would have to run the rear deliberately compromised just to bring an adequate balance.

![Charles Leclerc Ferrari Singapore Grand Prix 2019](https://storage.googleapis.com/the-race-com.appspot.com/1/2020/02/XPB_1008963_HiRes.jpg)

It wasn’t until the Singapore upgrade package in September that this weakness was fully addressed.

For the 2020 car, the aero department will have had to make a call quite early on whether to switch to the loaded outboard wing concept or to stay with a concept that was working pretty well from Singapore onwards.