Early outings have not gone well for Ferrari and their single-pillar rear wing, but that is not set to deter the team from persisting with it.

This rear wing made its debut on day three of three at the Bahrain pre-season test, and then again during the opening practice session of the Bahrain Grand Prix race weekend, though both outings were far from smooth.

First there were DRS issues during its testing debut, as problems with the right side flap of the DRS meant Ferrari were forced to change back to the medium load wing which they ran on the first two days of testing.

And as the single-pillar wing returned for FP1 at the Bahrain GP, on-track footage showed it oscillating to a rather extreme level, once again meaning Ferrari needed to swap it for a wing with the traditional two supporting pillars.

But, Ferrari engineer Jock Clear confirmed in Bahrain that the single-pillar rear wing, which is designed to improve airflow “to the bottom of the main plane”, has not been axed, and that the issues come from it being a “young” development at this stage.

“I think the double-pylon obviously is a carryover from last year, tried and trusted,” said Clear, as per Motorsport.com.

“And the single didn’t really come into development until later in the year, in fact very late in the year, maybe the last month of development.

“So it’s fairly young. It’s a development that’s just a step forward on the rear wing really. Obviously getting down to a mono pillar just cleans up the flow to the bottom of the main plane.

“So it’s just providing a bit more juice. But like everything, we need to get it on the car and check it all out. And we did that at the test, and we did it again here, and it’s just an ongoing development really.

“So nothing amazing about it. But it’s probably something that we want to pursue, what we’ve seen so far is positive. So it’ll probably appear again.”

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As for the wing’s rather wobbly display in FP1, Clear said it is hard in the wind tunnel to really judge its ideal level of stiffness, so for an accurate reflection they needed to put it on the SF-23 and send it out onto the track.

Once more, with pre-season testing having lasted for only three days in Bahrain ahead of the season opener, Clear said it was a case of time not being on Ferrari’s side.

“It’s one of those things where actually it’s very difficult to get that sort of mode of vibration replicated in the wind tunnel,” Clear stated.

“You can get the loads out of it, but all the stiffnesses actually have to be reflected in the real size. So that’s why we’ve had to go to the car, we put it on the car.

“And of course, nowadays, you get very little testing time. So we have to use these Fridays to test some bits. So as I say, it’s just a normal development. And we’ve learned a lot from it. And we’ve got the videos, we’ve got the sensors on it, it will tell us how much movement there is now.

“It’s obviously improved from last week to this week. And we’ll go back to the factory and improve it again. And once we’re comfortable with it, it’ll appear.”

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