Leading German automobile magazine Auto motor und sport (AMuS) reports on Ferrari’s struggles in Australia:
“The experts were rarely this bad. Their forecasts were turned upside down at the Formula 1 season opener. The alleged problem child Mercedes celebrated a superior one-two victory, and the big favourite Ferrari drowned. Ferrari lost seven tenths on the silver arrows on one lap and almost one second per lap on average over the race distance.
After the tests, the world looked quite different. In Barcelona Ferrari would have won with 20 seconds ahead of Mercedes. In the first reflex one is inclined to say: Mercedes only bluffed during the winter tests and made us all believe they had a problem.
That can certainly be ruled out. I can still remember the faces of the engineers after the briefing at the end of the first day of testing. It lasted until 20:15. Even team boss Toto Wolff was there until the end. From the faces a certain helplessness could be read. Even when a whole new W10 was sent out a week later, the faces didn’t look relaxed. Ferrari drove fast laps with ease. Mercedes struggled with the midfield. Some in the team already said it openly. Maybe you have to think about the concept of the front wing.
Lewis Hamilton is a bad actor. Frustration is expressed in his speechlessness. He then talks so softly that you hardly hear anything. And the world champion was short-spoken when he gave his press conference in the lunch break of the last test day. He talked about half a second behind Ferrari, about the biggest challenge of the last six years and about his confidence in this team, which has an answer to every problem.
One or two tenths could still be made up with a better understanding, but the defending champion grumbled that they had not been so far behind for a long time. That wasn’t played. That was real. Mercedes took fuel out in Barcelona. Then Hamilton got into the car from Barcelona one last time in those eight days. Mercedes took fuel out and used the soft tyres. When did this happen in the last few years? Mercedes didn’t even touch the soft Pirelli tyres, or they didn’t order them at all, and taking fuel out, no, that was something for the others who don’t know exactly where they stand.
The fact that Mercedes took exactly this measure shows how insecure they were. But in these last four hours of the winter tests, the engineers were able to see the light. Finally what belonged together came together. Finally a set-up was found that at least enabled Hamilton to approach Sebastian Vettel’s best time by three thousandths of a second. Toto Wolff admits in retrospect: “That was the moment when we saw light at the end of the tunnel. That’s when we started to understand our car.”
Nevertheless, there were still doubts. Chief Engineer Andrew Shovlin admits that the most optimistic evaluation of the data was at eye level with Ferrari. “Under the worst assumption we were six tenths behind.” The fact that Melbourne converted the worst-case expected gap into an even clearer lead was also out of the blue for Mercedes. “We surprised ourselves,” Hamilton admitted after his sixth consecutive pole position in Albert Park. And the Mercedes camp only wanted to believe in the miracle when it was confirmed on Sunday. Ferrari was not only slow, the red cars also destroyed their tyres.
No other car tyre degradation was as bad as Ferrari’s.
The three faces of the Ferrari
That begs the question: Was Mercedes that strong or Ferrari that weak? At least this question is answered quickly. Ferrari has sold themselves below value: “If we use the test results as a basis, then all the gaps between us and the other teams fit into the picture. Red Bull may have been a question mark, but we expected them to be about as strong as they were in Melbourne. The only team that was totally out of line was Ferrari. Compared to us, but also compared to all the others,” the Mercedes engineers put it into perspective.
Their conclusion: “Ferrari must have had a problem with their car”.
This is consistent with Ferrari’s statement. Team boss Mattia Binotto insisted: “We didn’t show the potential of our car.” Vettel confirmed: “We know that our car is better than what we saw in Melbourne. In Barcelona everything worked out from day one. In Melbourne I never found confidence in my car. It didn’t do what I wanted it to do anymore.”
When asked what had gone wrong, Ferrari couldn’t or didn’t want to give an explanation.
Binotto just said so much: “We never found the right balance on those three days. We lacked grip and with that we got problems with the tyres”. Vettel recognised small rays of hope here and there, but on the whole the speed was simply lacking.
The helplessness was also expressed in the fact that the Ferrari showed three faces in the race. Nice on the soft C4 tyres, pathetic on the middle C3 tyres, surprisingly strong on the hard C2 tyres.
If everything was bad, Charles Leclerc wouldn’t have showed up strong at the end.
Problems spread all over the lap
When analysing what could have gone wrong with Ferrari, you have to resort to GPS measurements and section times and try to read from them why time has come to a standstill. In practice Ferrari lost three tenths each in sectors 1 and 2 and the last tenth in the six corners of the final section. Achilles’ heel were the slow corners, especially T1, T3, T4 and T13. As these corners are spread over three sectors, the Mercedes engineers believe that this rules out any incorrect use of the tyres.
“Then Ferrari would have lost most of the time in the first sector or in the final section. But the problems were spread across the lap. So in general they must have had too little grip.”
At the four speed measuring points on the straights Ferrari lost minimal time in practice: 2.3 km/h at top speed, 0.9 km/h in S1, 0.1 km/h in S2. On the finish line Leclerc was even stopped 0.8 km/h faster than the Mercedes.However, it is noticeable that Vettel was slower than Leclerc at all measuring points. By an average of 2.4 km/h. In the race the speed deficit increased drastically. Vettel was missing at the four measuring points between 5.7 and 10.2 km/h on winner Vatteri Bottas.
Ferrari’s number one hardly ever came into the DRS area, but also Bottas drove around at the top quite lonely. Hhere we have to ask again. Did Ferrari have a problem with the PU or did they turned down out of caution?
The third sector of Barcelona?
You can’t overestimate the influence of the top speeds on the lap time. The decisive factor is what happens in the corners. And that brings us back to the subject of slow corners. The words of Valtteri Bottas still ring in our ears during the tests, when Mercedes was still poking in the fog. “The car clearly got better in slow corners. But in the fast corners we still feel an instability in the rear.” Since Barcelona mainly consists of long and fast corners, this deficit was disproportionately significant there. When Mercedes now says that they were enlightened on the last day of testing, it’s very likely the problem in the fast corners. This has obviously been solved by changing the aero balance.
Flashback to Barcelona. There is an interesting detail from the comparison of Vettel’s and Hamilton’s fastest laps that could give an indication of why Ferrari was worse than expected in Melbourne. And that it may not only have to do with the set-up, as Ferrari wants to tell us. Let’s recall Barcelona for a moment. The first sector consists of three fast corners. The second consists of two slow corners, one medium fast, one fast corner and one straight. The third consists of five slow corners, one medium fast and one fast. And now the two top laps in sector comparison (see the graphic on the AMuS page)
Notice anything? Hamilton took three tenths of a second off the Ferrari in the third sector, whose corners are most similar to those in Melbourne. So already in Barcelona, where the Ferrari was still in shape. That’s a lot of wood and suggests that even a well-balanced Ferrari has a problem in this area. Ferrari made up for the lost time in the first two sectors, where the corners are mostly fast and have long radii.
There are no such sectors in Melbourne. The last 31 seconds of the lap are the closest to Barcelona, and that’s where Ferrari lost the least time on Mercedes. By the way, the Mercedes and Ferrari were absolutely identical at top speed and speed measurement on the finish line in Barcelona. Which leads to the conclusion that the car is relatively identical in terms of power and drag.
Suspension travel and aerodynamics
In Melbourne, the slow corners are what count most. Seven of the 16 corners are under 160 km/h. Mercedes was already in a good position. If the silver arrows have not lost anything on Ferrari thanks to the homework between the test drives and the first race in the fast corners, and Ferrari could not solve his problem in the slow corners, a good lead is quickly achieved.
Possibly Ferrari knew about his weakness and messed up the setup more and more to recover the weakness. Maybe Ferrari could have learned something from Red Bull, who also turned in circles with the set-up, but jumped on the right train at the last minute. At first the suspension was trimmed to hard and harder and the lap times became slower and slower. It was only when they went softer that Red Bull was able to escape the trap.
It must worry Ferrari that there are more slow than fast corners in Bahrain as well. That mechanical grip is as important as good aerodynamics. In the first reflex one would say that Ferrari should also allow more suspension travel. But that’s not always easy. Maybe the aerodynamic platform of the SF90 only works in a small window at ground clearance. That would be a serious problem, because it is not easy to solve. Because of its front wing concept, Ferrari has to drive a lot of pitch in order to get back the downforce via a deep wing, which one normally loses with this arrangement of front wing flaps.
Mercedes’ doubts about the front wing philosophy of Ferrari, Alfa-Sauber, Toro Rosso, McLaren and Haas were centered around the question of how to get the downforce back on the front axle. Sky expert Martin Brundle reported from the track that the Ferrari had shown too much understeer in the slow corners. In an effort to stop this, the engineers may have overstepped the mark. They made the rear end weaker, but paid for it with poorer traction and more tyre wear.
The Mercedes engineers nevertheless believe in a one-off slip and attribute it to the Ferrari’s unusually heavy tyre wear.
“In Barcelona, Ferrari, we and Haas were on about the same level. In Melbourne the Ferrari was a different car. This is shown by the pictures taken by the onboard camera. The thing that drove on rails in Barcelona was suddenly unstable in Melbourne. The only differences were the track characteristics, the temperatures and the wind”. ”
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