Lewis Hamilton’s first Ferrari design details emerge as ‘Project 677’ comes to life

According to reports, Ferrari is planning to keep their unconventional pullrod rear suspension layout for Lewis Hamilton’s first season with the team, which will take place in Formula One during the year 2025.

Hamilton made a statement in February that rocked the Formula One world when he announced that he would be joining Ferrari on a multi-year contract beginning with the F1 2025 season. This announcement marked the end of Hamilton’s long and successful association with Mercedes.

We now have new information regarding Lewis Hamilton’s first Ferrari Formula One car.
In addition to becoming the first man in history to surpass 100 grand prix victories and pole positions, the British driver has won six of his seven World Championships with Mercedes, earning him a joint record for the most World Championships won by a single driver.

Additionally, Mercedes has the distinction of being the engine that has been used in each of Lewis Hamilton’s 351 Formula One appearances to this point, dating all the way back to his first season with McLaren in 2007.The latter will see Ferrari follow in the footsteps of Red Bull and McLaren by adopting a pullrod front suspension layout. This layout is believed to bring a significant aerodynamic benefit by improving airflow at the front of the car and specifically the complex underbody, which generates a significant portion of the car’s overall downforce in accordance with the ground-effect regulations that are currently in place.

The move is said to have been directly influenced by the impending arrival of Hamilton, having a driving style that is more similar to that of Charles Leclerc, who is a teammate of Hamilton’s in Formula One 2025, than it is to Carlos Sainz, who is currently the incumbent driver. This helped to facilitate the change in philosophy.

And now, the Italian publication La Gazzetta della Sport has disclosed that Ferrari is planning to continue using a pullrod rear suspension for the upcoming season.

It is said that the packaging of the cooling system will also be “evolved” in order to provide the aerodynamic department with a greater degree of freedom, particularly in the lower section of the sidepods. Additionally, the location of the internal gearbox parts is going to be revised as well.

With Formula One 2025 being the final year of the current rules cycle and the major regulation changes scheduled for 2026, the report asserts that Project 677 will have a “clear family feeling” in many areas. This is due to the fact that Ferrari will largely stick with their current car design, with “many current concepts taken to extremes, but not overturned.”

Since the beginning of the ground-effect era, Ferrari’s rear suspension has been the subject of intense scrutiny. The Scuderia and the customer outfit Haas are the only teams that have not yet made the transition to a pushrod framework.

According to the report, Ferrari considers their pullrod rear suspension to be a “cornerstone” of the vehicle dynamics of their F1 2024 car. The team is convinced that this suspension is an essential component in making their F1 2024 car the best on the grid in terms of having the ability to manage its tires.

While speaking to members of the media, including PlanetF1.com, at the launch of this year’s SF-24 in February, Enrico Cardile, who was serving as Ferrari’s technical director at the time, was adamant that the company thought there would be no obvious advantages to having the pushrod layout at the rear of the car instead.

The announcement that Cardile would be moving to Aston Martin for Formula One 2025 in July sparked speculation that Ferrari might rethink their position on the rear suspension going forward. However, the team is currently in a position where they are not planning to make any changes to their position.

The new chassis technical director of Ferrari, Loic Serra, began his employment with the company at the beginning of this month. Serra was initially hired from Mercedes to work under Cardile, but he was promoted after the Italian made the decision to switch to Aston Martin.

Due to the fact that Serra has shared the seven-time World Champion’s reservations regarding the controversial zero-pod concept that Mercedes is pursuing throughout the 2022/23 season under the direction of former technical director Mike Elliott, it is well known that Serra is a close advisor to Hamilton.

Over the course of the summer, there were reports coming out of Italy that claimed Ferrari had made the initial design decisions for their F1 2025 car, which was codenamed Project 677. These decisions included a change to the wheelbase and a switch to utilize pullrod front suspension.