Scuderia Ferrari Spanish driver Carlos Sainz has provided three plausible explanations for why Maranello team has lot its strong pace in the last three rounds of the 2022 Formula 1 championship. At the same, the Spaniard confirmed that Ferrari plan to do some comparative tests on the F1-75 car during the first free practice session for the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, given the fact that there are “doubts we want to take out from our heads”.
Carlos Sainz was therefore pointing out to the several problems that the F1-75 car faced at Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps and Zandvoort, both circuits where the Red Bull RB18 car proved a lot faster than Ferrari, especially with Max Verstappen.
The Spaniard started from third place in the Belgian Grand Prix, but had to settle for third place, almost 30 seconds behind Max Verstappen, as the Dutchman easily won the race despite starting from P14 due to a power unit failure.
In qualifying for the Dutch Grand Prix, Charles Leclerc came close to taken pole position, but was narrowly beaten to pole by Max Verstappen (by just 0.021s). However, the Mercedes W13 cars proved to have a better race pace at Zandvoort and the Monegasque driver would have likely finished the Dutch Grand Prix behind both Lewis Hamilton and George Russell had it not been for a late safety car which helped to take a podium finish:
“In general we haven’t been as strong in the race as we would have liked” – Carlos Sainz admitted, in his press conference ahead of the Monza weekend – “If that’s coming from tyres overheating, if that’s come from others getting better recently through the year with the upgrades, or this is coming from us simply not optimising the set-up of the car for that race in particular, is something we are obviously going to investigate. Personally, I picked up a bit of damage from the contact with Lewis [Hamilton at Turn 1 at Zandvoort], this probably affected my race pace in the whole race, that’s probably why I wasn’t as competitive as my race pace on Friday and wasn’t as comfortable with the car in the race. But I think the issue is a lot bigger than that – we were just not as competitive as we would have liked. There’s going to be some tests to do, some things, some doubts that we want to take out from our heads. See if we can pick the race pace back up.” – the Spanish driver added.
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By looking at Carlos Sainz’s three explanations for the Maranello team’s recent poor performance in terms of race pace, we arrive at a further intriguing overarching question.
Loss of pace was clear starting with the Hungarian Grand Prix at the Hungaroring circuit, which was the final round ahead of the summer break. Prior to the Budapest event, the Italian side’s car had secured seven pole positions from 12 dry qualifying sessions, alongside a pole position in wet conditions for Carlos Sainz in the British Grand Prix, which he eventually won. Despite Ferrari took just four wins in that time, the outcome of the events not caused by race pace itself.
Starting with the Hungaroring race, the Maranello team has not been able to get its tyres up to temperature well in a flying lap in qualifying, while on Sunday the F1-75 car suffered overheating problems in the race.
The start of the 2022 F1 Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort clearly illustrated the issue: Charles Leclerc was able to get close to Max Verstappen, who was running in P1, but was then forced to back off once again due to the fact that the rear tyres of the F1-75 were overheating. In Carlos Sainz’s case, the issue was even worse, maybe even amplified by some damage due to a collision Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes at the race start.
This means that during the last three rounds of the 2022 Formula 1 championship, Hungaroring, Spa-Francorchamps and Zandvoort, Scuderia Ferrari lost its rythm due to problems with getting the tyres to work, a problem that had not been experienced by the Maranello team ahead of the Budapest event. There were certain circuits that showed the F1-75’s tendency to overwork its outer-front tyre and lead to graining problems, but no clear issue with temperatures, unlike what could be noted in the last three races.
As Carlos Sainz pointed out, there is something recent here Ferrari needs to investigate, understand and fix.
Since the start of the season, Red Bull has been constantly working to reduce the weight of its RB18. At the same time, their car’s balance has been continually improved with some small updates to the floor edges and has now become the fastest car on the grid, at least with Max Verstappen behind the wheel, as Sergio Perez has still struggled to capitalize on the car’s speed.
Mercedes had a poor first part of the 2022 F1 campaign, but in recent months has been able to better understand its troublesome W13 car and in the last few events has even matched the F1-75 cars, especially in terms of race pace. This means that what Ferrari is indeed experiencing is also down to what Carlos Sainz calls “others getting better” – but Scuderia Ferrari still needs to figure out why it has not been able to successfully continue developing and improving its car at a similar or even better rate.
The new technical directive was introduced in the Belgian Grand Prix and from the outside it is difficult to understand how each team gas been affected when it comes to set-up choices. At the same time, while it is obvious that the Spa-Francorchamps circuit did not suit the F1-75’s strengths (cornering) and played to its inherent weakness (drag at high speed), the track characteristics of the Hungaroring or Zandvoort should not have led to any more set-up difficulties than the circuits where Ferrari proved to have the fastest car in the first part of the 2022 F1 campaign.
Ferrari boss Mattia Binotto has denied many times any influence from the new technical directive on Ferrari’s drop of performance in Belgium, but could it be possible that Ferrari in fact ran to the new interpretation one race early, so as to prepare? And if so, is that the real reason for the F1-75 car’s recent lack of pace?
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