The Qualifying result for the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix means Ferrari has to settle for a fourth place with Charles Leclerc, who finished ahead of his Maranello teammate Carlos Sainz, which would make the Italian side the third force on the track. Everything seems to point to a recap of what was seen in Miami, with a McLaren once again very strong and Max Verstappen on pole (also) thanks to a slipstream, with his teammate nowhere to be found. The updates brought by Ferrari at Imola are being discussed, as they improved the performance of the SF-24 but were not enough to fight for pole position. Once again, the main problem was the first sector, where the two Ferrari drivers lost a couple of tenths compared to their direct rivals, which could not be recovered over the lap.
The characteristics of the Ferrari SF-24 penalize the car in qualifying.
At the end of the day, there was some regret for not being able to fight until the end of Q3. Ferrari showed competitiveness throughout the weekend, but in the end, the gap was over two tenths for Charles Leclerc and almost half a second from pole position for Carlos Sainz. Certainly not the results expected. “Maybe it went a bit worse than expected, but there was no more potential in the car,” commented the Monegasque frankly. No one at Maranello is pointing fingers at the developments, which worked as expected and increased the overall load of the SF-24, and Frederic Vasseur also confirmed that “the correlation was good. The updates do what we expected.” What prevented the two Ferrari drivers from fighting for pole position was the first sector. In the second sector, the SF-24 performed well, once again proving to be the most competitive in medium-speed corners, and especially in the third sector, at Rivazza 1 and 2, Ferrari had excellent cornering speeds. This also confirms how well the SF-24 manages the tires, completing the lap in good condition, unlike some rivals – Red Bull – who were not particularly strong today in that section.
The difficulties in the first sector, according to the Ferrari Team Principal, are due to the characteristics of the car. “We struggle there, but then from around Turn 4 onwards, we are competitive. With the slipstream, Max was ahead by two and a half tenths at that point, and in the end, we recovered, which means that for the rest of the lap we were even faster,” he said after Qualifying. A more technical explanation was then provided by the two drivers, with Charles Leclerc talking about Red Bull’s ability to attack the curbs of the first corners, which cannot be replicated with the SF-24. “Temperature management is always important, and we are working on it, but we don’t understand what we lack in the first corners,” said the Monegasque. Carlos Sainz, on the other hand, indicated the wind as the main problem. “Yesterday there was a headwind, and we were strong even in the first corners and Turn 7; today there was a tailwind, and our car suffers a bit when the wind pushes from behind. That, plus the non-optimal tire temperatures, and you immediately get a loss of four tenths,” explained the Spaniard.
Carlos Sainz also mentioned a problem that had already emerged in the past and has been a recurring theme this season: extracting potential in Qualifying with Soft tires. “We need to work to improve the car with the soft tires.” Ferrari still suffers a bit from poor responsiveness in Qualifying, with soft tires and little fuel on board, and the SF-24, which is so manageable in the race, becomes more difficult to handle during the fast lap, lagging behind McLaren and Red Bull. Many small things add up to create the gap that Charles Leclerc experienced compared to Max Verstappen’s reference time.
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If the gap experienced by Charles Leclerc was around 2 tenths, Carlos Sainz’s was more than double. Analyzing the two laps, the greatest difficulties for the Spaniard were in the slow sections, losing 1 tenth at Tosa and Variante Alta and about half a tenth at Acque Minerali; these differences created the gap seen at the end of the lap between the two Ferrari drivers. “In the race, we can be close, but here track position is important. Carlos and I were quite close; there wasn’t much more to extract from the car,” commented the Monegasque, not happy with the result but still satisfied with his lap, given all the limitations mentioned earlier. Carlos Sainz said that today Ferrari didn’t have enough in Qualifying to challenge Red Bull and McLaren. “They were already faster in Miami, and for me, this is a McLaren circuit, I said it before the weekend.” – the Spaniard concluded.
