Lights and Shadows
The debut race of the 2024 season was overall positive for Ferrari, which managed to confirm itself as the second force on the track behind an unreachable Red Bull. The only real concerns came from reliability. Both Carlos Sainz and – especially – Charles Leclerc were victims of significant brake problems that affected their respective races.
Charles Leclerc, in particular, during the first stint, dropped from the second to the fifth position within a few laps, falling victim to repeated lock-ups of the front right tire in various braking zones around the Sakhir circuit. A complex issue related to brake temperatures that slowly diminished towards the end of the Bahrain Grand Prix last Saturday.
Unusual Lock-Ups
The specific difficulty that affected SF-24 #16 was closely analyzed by former driver Davide Valsecchi. Through a video posted on his YouTube channel, ValseMotori, he tried to address in detail the issues faced by Charles Leclerc during the race. What caught the attention of the former GP2 champion were some unusual lock-ups by Leclerc, who, on several occasions, ‘locked’ the front right tire, even in the braking zone of turn 10, a point where the left tire normally locks up.
“Charles Leclerc had a brake problem that led him to have lock-ups that ruined his tire – Davide Valsecchi hypothesized, thus expanding the cause of the repeated misbrakes by the Ferrari driver – the flattening of the front right tire affected his race. Every time he reached that area of the tire, during braking, the tire was already flattened and would lock up. In the descent between turns 9 and 10, during braking, the front left should lock up. Instead, he was locking up the right even at that point,” concluded Davide Valsecchi at the end of the 2024 Formula 1 Bahrain Grand Prix.
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