Ferrari’s upgrades expose the SF-26’s power-unit weakness, Filisetti argues

Ferrari’s development of the SF-26 has made its power unit stand out as the car’s main performance limitation, in the analysis of RacingNews365 technical expert Paolo Filisetti. He says the car has reduced several other weaknesses, including a tendency to generate relatively high drag, and gained a wider performance window across different types of circuit.

Ferrari brought its final major aerodynamic development package of the season to Austin. But Filisetti says the SF-26’s performance in Texas was not down to that package alone: it came from integrating the development with earlier updates. He describes the car as a good base for further development and says each update package introduced has worked.

Filisetti writes that engineers led by Loïc Serra have succeeded at each development step in combining the car’s dynamic and aerodynamic requirements. He also says technicians from rival teams regard the SF-26’s chassis and suspension as particularly well designed.

Filisetti traces the remaining shortfall to the power unit’s design concept, not to a compromise in packaging the engine for aerodynamic gain. He points to choices such as a smaller-diameter turbine as affecting engine performance, rather than the way the unit is installed in the car.

For 2027, Filisetti writes, engineers led by Enrico Gualtieri have a clear target: to equip the next car with a power unit without the current engine’s performance limitations. He says the task will be difficult, but Ferrari has concrete data to guide the changes, which are intended to produce an effectively all-new unit.