The new Ferrari 296 Speciale has been engineered to deliver one of the most advanced aerodynamic packages ever seen on a rear-wheel drive road car from Maranello, generating 435kg of downforce at 250km/h, a 20 per cent increase over the 296 GTB Coupe.
Speaking about the development of the 296 Speciale’s aero package, Ferrari Aerodynamics Performance Engineer Marco Milanetti said the goal was not only more grip, but greater confidence.
“We managed to give 20 per cent more downforce to this car,” he said. “But more than this the target was to give accessible performance, because if you have a peak of performance but in a very narrow window, then yes you have lap time but you don’t have the time to drive that we wanted to give to this car.”
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Roughly two-thirds of the downforce increase comes from the Speciale’s redesigned underbody. Mr Milanetti explained that Ferrari reworked the diffuser to produce cleaner airflow underneath the car.
“One of the main modification was to bring these vortex generators closer to the front,” he said. “This can exploit more downforce. We reviewed completely the shape of the diffuser itself. You can see we had two different compartments in the 296, now we have three almost equal zones.”
The central channel now creates a deeper low-pressure area that works in concert with the newly developed side wings on the rear bumper.
“We found another optimum, because maybe it’s not immediate but the diffuser and the top of the car, especially the side wings, work really in a synergic way,” said Mr Milanetti.
The side wings themselves are a blend of the Ferrari FXX K and Challenge race car concepts. “We have the horizontal profile, which work really like wing profile on the external side, which generates downforce. And on the side, we have these larger… let’s say we make the car larger and straighter, and this helps the way the wake is released downstream.”
At the front, the 296 Speciale debuts an Aero Damper, a duct connecting the underbody to the bonnet. Its purpose is to stabilise downforce as the car’s ride height changes.
“It’s maybe not very evident, but it’s a really innovative concept, and it gives also a lot of the confidence that you see when you drive. It makes the car more predictable,” Mr Milanetti said.
The channel links the central floor section with the upper body, “making its downforce less sensitive.” By venting air upward, the system keeps the aerodynamic balance consistent under braking or acceleration, rather than chasing higher peak downforce at the expense of stability.
Ferrari also eliminated the central ‘tea-tray’ section of the 296 GTB’s floor to feed more energetic airflow to the Aero Damper.
“We removed the tray, which was expected in terms of pure dampers, but was spoiling a little, taking some energy from the flow that goes on the car,” said Mr Milanetti.
The front louvres above each wheel-arch were added to reduce pressure inside the wheel wells.
“These louvres are designed to connect the high-pressure zone that we have in the wheel area with the low-pressure under the car. The air is flowing through the louvers and is reducing the pressure in the wheelhouse,” he explained.
“This has an effect also on the diffuser, because if we reduce the pressure here in the wheel area, we are basically removing a blockage for the front diffuser.”
Mr Milanetti described how Ferrari’s aerodynamic team mapped airflow in both wind-tunnel and CFD simulations across every possible load condition to ensure the car’s reactions remain linear.
“The idea for the aero development of these cars is to minimise these changes so that you can predict easy what the car is doing,” he said. “You have still high performance, but you have a more predictable behaviour while you drive.”
Ferrari says the combination of its underfloor redesign, active rear spoiler, new side wings, and the front Aero Damper allows the 296 Speciale to deliver track-car levels of grip and stability without a corresponding drag penalty.
“The car will behave differently in braking or acceleration,” Mr Milanetti concluded, “but what we wanted was not peak, narrow performance that only a master driver can exploit, but also to have fun, to make it manageable.”