Ferrari's Jock Clear has rejected claims that they simply copied Red Bull with their recent Formula 1 upgrade to their SF-23 machine. At the Spanish Grand Prix, Ferrari ditched their own sidepod design, for a downwash-style package, with the new parts looking similar to those Red Bull have used since the start of 2022. This is despite the shape of the sidepods not having much to be with performance differentiation with the floors of the cars being the primary weapon to create downforce, and with it, lap-time. There were suggestions that Ferrari - whose boss Frederic Vasseur is not a fan of changing the overall car concept for this season - had simply copied Red Bull, but Clear, who works with Charles Leclerc as a driver coach in addition to his senior performance engineer role, denied this.
Ferrari did not copy Red Bull
"When people launch their car, they're convinced about it," Clear told media including RacingNews365. "Nobody is like: 'Are we putting these sidepods on that we aren't convinced about?' We're all convinced about what we had. "We have to learn from what other people are doing, but we also have to look at what we're doing. We're not copying anyone per se, we're looking at what they did, we're going back to our wind-tunnel and trying to find out if it works. "[The new parts] have appeared on the ca because it works, and ultimately, we follow the science. "That is the great thing about aerodynamics, a great thing about this sport, and the reason we do it, in my case for 30 years, is because everyday is different, every year is different and every car is different. "We're still learning that there are a million ways to solve the problems, and you're never going to cover all of them, so as son as you see what someone else is doing well, you get that in your [wind]tunnel, you have to be disciplined enough not to have a knee-jerk reaction and chuck it on your car, because it won't work. "You have to give yourself a couple of months to get it sorted, to get it to work with your car and then you say: 'Yeah actually, I can see where they are coming from here.' "What you see [with the upgrades] is the result of that. "It's going to lead to further developments down that avenue, we've started to investigate a new avenue to go down - and this is the result of that."
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