Inside The Machine

A key part of Ferrari’s tech armoury is the simulator, a tool that has been used by the F1 team for much of the past two decades. Its significance as a developmental aid was greatly accelerated when in-season testing was banned by the FIA in 2009.

With a scrupulously policed cost-cap now also in place, evolving a new F1 car is more than ever the province of the virtual world. Scuderia Ferrari recently began using an all-new simulator, whose correlation with the ‘real’ world and validation capability is so good that the drivers using it claim it’s about 98 per cent accurate.

Watch an exclusive video where Marc Gené explores the simulator at Maranello

But that doesn’t mean that the previous system is redundant. In fact, it’s very much alive and well, as the head of Head of F1 Clienti, XX Programme and Corso Pilota workshop Filippo Petrucci explains. “This simulator has been used up to 2022 by all the drivers. With the Scuderia now moving to the latest generation sim, this one will be used by Ferrari customer racing teams as well as the LMH programme. We also thought it would be good to offer the opportunity to drive the modern V6 hybrid turbo to our Corse Clienti customers, especially the ones who own and are familiar with the old V8, V10 and V12 machines.”

The benefits to the race team are well-documented.  “You can make big changes to a car for minimal outlay,” Petrucci continues. “You can alter the configuration of a car, including changing the length of the wheelbase. This is something that would be almost impossible to do in the real world. The simulator is used for set-up, particularly as the team prepares to race at a new circuit. Ferrari’s test drivers can also work in real time with the race team on set-up changes, wherever they are in the world.”

The simulator offers a choice of some of the world’s most famous circuits: Monza, Barcelona, Silverstone, Imola, Nürbürgring, Zandvoort, SPA Francorchamps and Mugello

The simulator is in constant demand; Petrucci estimates that only 15 days per year are available to customers. There’s a morning training session, during which the differences between an old-school F1 car and the latest hybrid version are outlined. This includes unravelling the complexities of energy recuperation, DRS, and the formidable latest-gen steering wheel.

“The customer can tailor the experience, but we would recommend two circuits during the day,” Petrucci says. “In the morning session we suggest Barcelona because it’s representative, and has some fast, high downforce corners. In the afternoon the customer can choose whichever circuit they like. A coach monitors a driver in real time and offers tuition via a comms link. There are also two engineers on hand in the control room, monitoring all the telemetry that is available to the F1 team.

Scuderia Ferrari ambassador Marc Gené worked closely with the expert engineers who are able to provide a dynamic and detailed analysis of the ride

“The feedback you get is almost identical to the sensations you feel in the car on a circuit. You can replicate everything, including the exact composition of the asphalt and the degradation the tyres undergo. You can control all the variables. There has been a continuous evolution in terms of the graphics, on how detailed the feedback is to the driver, on the pedal feel, on the vibrations that are fed to the driver, on everything. Contemporary F1 cars are bigger and heavier, less agile, perhaps. But the tyres are also bigger, there is more mechanical and aerodynamic grip, and much more downforce. Get behind the wheel of a 2017-spec car and the difference to the driver is immediately transparent.”

Simulator designers and engineers talk about latency, which is effectively the gap between what happens on the sim versus real world racing conditions. On the latest Ferrari simulator this is now less than four milliseconds, while the system’s bandwidth is more than 55hz across what are called six ‘degrees of freedom’ (DOF, for short). This is the technical way of describing how accurately the information on the main screen is processed and conveyed on each plane of movement to the driver and what’s called his ‘vestibular’ system. The lower the latency the faster the driver will be able to respond to dynamic phenomena such as under- or oversteer.

Before getting into the cockpit, engineers provide a briefing on how to use the paddles mounted behind the steering wheel and which gears to use at the make-or-break points on the circuits

Petrucci, who was part of the Ferrari F1 team from 1995 until 2015, reckons that the younger generation of drivers – the ones whose natural talent was boosted by growing up in an era defined by slick computer games – adapt faster to the challenges of the simulator. Ultimately, it’s about building confidence in what is both an ultra-realistic but also completely safe environment, with experts on-hand to chip away at the lap time. What sort of improvement can a driver expect to see, I wonder. Petrucci smiles again.

“Well, there was one client who took 20 seconds off his lap time around Barcelona… Normally we would expect to see the lap time improve by between six or seven seconds. The simulator really is an extremely effective tool, as well as being a lot of fun.”