The FIA has reportedly been asked to clarify the legality of one particular aspect of the Ferrari SF-23 ahead of the new Formula 1 season.
All 10 teams have now shown off their new 'cars', though some were more forthcoming than others. Red Bull is an example of a team which unveiled an updated livery on a show car, while Ferrari were happy to show off more of their aerodynamic innovations as they took their new machine for a spin in front of a live audience.
One of their design features particularly caught the eye after the covers were pulled off the SF-23. Ferrari have taken the well-known S-Duct concept and tweaked it in a bid to create better airflow to the rear of the car, both low down and at the rear wing itself.
But, according to Italian outlet Formu1a.uno, Ferrari's rivals have picked up on the change. The FIA is said to have informed the Scuderia that other teams have requested clarification over whether the solution is legal.
Such requests are common in F1, as team regularly push the technical rules as far as they can and work to find tiny loopholes in a bid to find a performance advantage. In this case, Ferrari are said to be "certain that the solutions adopted on the SF-23 are fully within the rules".
The decision to adopt the design comes after the team weighed up various concepts in 2021, ahead of the implementation of the new technical rules which changed the look of F1 cars.
The eye-catching 'zeropod' concept – adopted only by Mercedes last year – was considered, according to the Formu1a.uno report. However, it was rejected as Ferrari's top technicians deemed it "less effective" and "more complex to understand and develop".
The aero design the Scuderia did go with turned out, of course, to be a very strong one in terms of performance. Their 2022 car was considered to be on par with the Red Bull RB18 which dominated the championship – Ferrari's title challenge collapsed due to frailties in other areas such as race strategy and engine reliability.
It remains to be seen whether Ferrari have got on top of those issues this year but, judging by the positive noises coming out of Maranello again, it seems the team is at least confident that it will have another strong car after focussing all their development efforts on the SF-23 since last summer.
