Ferrari cools the revolution talk: Project 678 suspension set for evolution, not overhaul
Ferrari looks set to resist tearing up its 2026 suspension plan after a pair of steady, smart weekends in Austin and Mexico City calmed nerves in Maranello. According to reports in the Italian press, the Scuderia will make fewer changes than first pencilled in for Project 678 — next year’s car that Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton will drive into F1’s new rules era.
It’s a notable pivot. For much of 2025, Ferrari’s SF-25 has been an awkward dance partner, its fundamental ride-height sensitivity forcing compromises and, in Shanghai, costing Hamilton a result when excessive plank wear led to disqualification. The team responded by lifting the car and living with the performance hit — hardly the path to beating Red Bull or McLaren — and the technical conversation quickly shifted to 2026: fresh regs, clean sheet, let’s fix this properly.
Then came the US-Mexico double. On two very different circuits — the bumpy, load-spiking COTA and the thin-air, efficiency-dependent Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez — the Ferrari looked more rounded. Leclerc banked podiums and the car behaved itself across a wider window. For a group that’s been spooked by kerbs and ride stiffness for much of the year, that mattered.
The upshot? Fewer big swings for Project 678’s suspension. The word from Italy is that Ferrari will lean into evolution rather than revolution: keep the underlying architecture that arrived this season, refine the details, and focus on tuning the “elastic response” of components such as torsion bars and the heave system that governs ground clearance. In other words, make the platform friendlier without ripping out the floorboards.
That tracks with Ferrari’s 12-month arc. The team took a philosophical step with a pullrod front suspension for 2025 — a move long championed by Red Bull and adopted by McLaren — and then introduced a revised rear end around Spa to unlock more of the SF-25’s potential. The results were mixed, but the direction of travel was set: better aero-mechanical coherence, less pitch-sensitivity, more usable ride.
If the past fortnight helped validate that work, the 2026 regulations do the rest. Next year’s cars ditch today’s full-on ground-effect concept in favour of a package built around active aerodynamics, 50 percent electrical power, and fully sustainable fuels. For Ferrari, which has worn the scars of ride-height exposure all season, the rules themselves are likely to blunt the very weakness that made a suspension reset so tempting.
There’s also the small matter of what’s going in the back. The power unit for 2026 has been described in Italy as “revolutionary,” with talk of an aluminium-alloy cylinder head and a tightly guarded intake concept after an earlier, highly innovative steel head path was reportedly abandoned on reliability grounds. With Wolf Zimmermann moving on from his ICE R&D role, the team has circled the wagons around a concept it believes in — and stability on the chassis side makes integration simpler. You don’t want your suspension department building a new church while the engine group is reimagining the organ.
That’s not to pretend 2025 has been the story Ferrari envisioned when it signed a seven-time champion. A win has proved elusive so far and the calendar’s final stretch — Brazil, Las Vegas, Qatar, Abu Dhabi — will test whether the late-season composure seen in the States and Mexico holds. But the mood music is different. Rather than chasing ghosts with wholesale suspension surgery, Project 678 can bank the gains, keep the language the drivers already speak, and let the team’s 2026 bets — active aero and that hush-hush power unit — carry the narrative.
There’s a risk in every conservative call. The field will arrive in 2026 with fresh ideas and a few will be spectacularly right. But Ferrari has played the long game here: fix the operating window, reduce the pain points, and turn the car into something predictable. With Hamilton’s preference for a planted front end and Leclerc’s comfort with a lively rear, a calmer, better-telegraphed platform gives both drivers a car they can lean on — and Ferrari a winter defined by targeted development rather than sweeping rework.
Quiet confidence suits them better than big promises. Project 678 now looks less like a revolution and more like a well-timed evolution. And if the last two race weekends are any guide, that might be exactly what Ferrari needs.
