Okay so if the cleanflight configurator can't connect then it wasn't flashed from the factory with cleanflight or at least not a version compatible with the configurator you have installed if you bought it recently then it might have betaflight flashed on it as well.
The driver installation is for your OS to be able to make a serial connection that the configurator apps can use. Basically the way the FCs work they have a STM32 chip at their core (generally a black plastic square looking chip with lots of pins around it called a QFP), that STM32 chip only speaks some old school serial protocols natively so there is another chip on there, believe on the SP Racing F3 board it's a Silicon Labs chip that does the serial communication so you need the Silicon Labs driver most likely for the device to show up as a regular Serial port with a COM port.
Looks like some pretty good instructions via video here, once you have the USB drivers installed you should be able to see the COM port in the device manager show up when you plug in the device, if that part is working then should be set to try flashing firmware:
The one below also shows flashing with betaflight
Can see in comments of second vid some people working out issues on getting the virtual com port to show up to connect to the device all about getting the right USB drivers installed and having that show up in device manager then you should be in good shape it looks like