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Ferrari will test its new Formula 1 floor again at the Mexican Grand Prix this weekend, with Red Bull also set to run its own version of the concept.
Ferrari has not been convinced by the new floor idea so far, having abandoned it after practice in Japan, and then deciding against racing a modified version in America, but its decision at both races was influenced by poor weather conditions in practice leading to a lack of useful running.
Although rolling back on its updates helped Ferrari take victory in Austin last weekend, the team still wants to understand more about the design.
It has fitted it again to Sebastian Vettel’s car for Friday practice in Mexico so it can do a proper back-to-back with the old floor that Kimi Raikkonen will run.
The floor features a long slot at the rear in front of the rear tyre, and it was modified last weekend with a series of three fins along the side of the car aimed at both energising the airflow and diverting debris away from the diffuser area.
Speaking ahead of the Mexico race, Sebastian Vettel said the team had to get to the bottom of why recent updates had not been successful.
“It is important that we are starting to understand what didn’t work or was not as good as before,” he said.
“It was important to go a step back to understand some things. But the main thing is we keep moving forward.
“The last couple of days have been quite important, the last weeks also, and we have started to understand a bit more, so we try to move forward.”
Red Bull has now also copied the Ferrari idea by adding extra fins to the floor of its RB14, as it plans to evaluate the development in Friday practice.
Red Bull has also added a Gurney flap to the back edge of the sidepod in a bid for extra downforce, as the air density at high altitude in Mexico means teams need to run high-downforce packages despite the circuit’s long straights.