McLaren has recovered a lot of ground compared to Red Bull, with exponential progress which has been highlighted also by the lack of expected progress from the RB20 single-seater. However, it is not just the team from Woking that has grown significantly: Mercedes has also made up a lot of gap against the rivals from Milton Keynes, overtaking Ferrari at the end of this first part of the 2024 Formula 1 season. In Maranello, they are grappling with difficulties arising from the latest aerodynamic development package, which was introduced at the Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona and which did not bring the expected step forward, but have rather set the SF-24 back. The two teams have ended up fighting each other, with almost opposite trajectories from the start of the 2024 Formula 1 championship up to the Belgian Grand Prix, the last round ahead of the summer break.
Mercedes’ start to the season with the W15 had suggested a season mirroring the past years: the car did not provide reference points to engineers and drivers due to a very narrow operating window, and in the first months of the 2024 F1 campaign, George Russell and Lewis Hamilton were fighting with Aston Martin to be the fourth force. The turning point came in the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix at the Imola circuit, also through small targeted updates to correct fundamental problems of the Brackley car, with exponential performance improvements that have made the W15 the third force in the last five races, recovering from the start of the season almost four tenths per lap in terms of qualifying pace and even seven tenths on Sundays compared to Red Bull. The gain over McLaren has been 1 tenth in Qualifying and 2 tenths in terms of race pace.
The difficulties compared to McLaren and Red Bull remain in the medium-slow corners, where a rear end that has been problematic for the drivers since the beginning of the season does not allow maximizing the time in those sections. With warmer temperatures, the overheating of the rear axle makes the W15 less competitive compared to the two leading teams, and the performance suffers: the latest aerodynamic updates, introduced and discarded on Friday in the first two free practice sessions at the 7.004-kilometre Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps, were meant to improve this complexity, but in FP1 and FP2 there was a “lack of balance and grip” also due to bouncing, and the updates will be resumed after the summer break with the aim of challenging McLaren on every type of track.
The start of the season for Scuderia Ferrari turned out even better than expected: the anticipated fight with McLaren and Mercedes for the second position in the Constructors’ Championship seemed to favor the Italian side thanks to a good winter development, and Red Bull did not seem so far away. In Qualifying and Race, the gap to the Red Bull RB20 of Max Verstappen was about three tenths, with the main difficulty being to warm up the tires for the flying lap. The first aerodynamic updates in Imola brought lap time improvements mainly by enhancing the aerodynamic efficiency of the SF-24, cutting the gap to Red Bull by over two tenths, and improving the Qualifying and Race performance of the Italian car by about two tenths.
Ferrari’s problems began with the introduction of the Barcelona aerodynamic package and increased difficulties in terms of Qualifying pace on Saturdays: the porpoising triggered by the extra downforce added through the new floor troubled Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz especially with low fuel, when it is necessary to find the limit with a car that one must trust. This was no longer the case with the SF-24 single-seater so much so that this hurdle worsened Qualifying performance, the area where the car needed to improve the most in order to be able to challenge Red Bull and McLaren.
Consequently, the strong point of the initial version of the SF-24 car, namely the medium-speed corners, has become the main weakness along with the high-speed corners, sections where Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz now lose a lot of time in Qualifying and Race. Using the McLaren MCL38 as a reference, three and a half tenths have unfortunately been lost on Saturdays and over two tenths on Sundays. As a result, the updates which the Maranello technicians are working on and which are currently scheduled to be introduced in September, most like at Monza in Italy or in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, will be crucial for the second part of the 2024 Formula 1 championship, although clearly, others will not stop their developments either, and returning to fight for victories will be a very difficult but not impossible task for the Italian side, as explained by F1 expert Andrea Vergani for formu1a.uno.
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