Scuderia Ferrari’s performance after the summer break has created more than a few perplexities among fans and even the team itself. Is it the fault of Technical Directive 39 introduced at Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps or is it simply coincidence? In Maranello they continue to talk of a drop in performance generated by a balance that was lost after the introduction of the last updated floor specification in the French Grand Prix at the Paul Ricard circuit.
In short, Ferrari blamed itself for the major step backwards made by the F1-75 car, which at Spa-Francorchamps and the Netherlands even ended up behind Mercedes in terms of race pace. This was all linked by the Italian side to a problematic update, despite the fact that the update was never removed from the F1-75.
In support of these arguments coming from Maranello, official and unofficial, there are also the comments of Red Bull technical director Pierre Waché: “It is very complicated to develop these new cars, adding performance and maintaining the right balance. Sometimes you have to give up one of the two”. Mattia Binotto revealed how both drivers, already in France, had complained of a more ‘nervous’ F1-75. Nervous? But certainly not slow if we look at Charles Leclerc’s performances and above all at Carlos Sainz’s comeback in the race at Paul Ricard.
Then came Hungary where the setup was wrong due to much colder conditions (temperatures) but even there we cannot say that the F1-75 car was slow. Could it have performed better? Of course, with a more centered set-up, but certainly there was nothing to do with the tire problems seen especially in Belgium and the Netherlands, which are circuits more reliable for data gathering than the unique Monza track.
Ferrari’s huge drop in performance was especially noticeable in the races at Spa and the Netherlands, with excessive tire degradation, something that has never been a real problem for F1-75 in the first half of the 2022 Formula 1 season. If in qualifying, the extra grip of the tires often helps, the major issue of tyre management then emerges clearly in the race for Ferrari.
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In Monza, Ferrari took a step back in the very first free practice sessions by testing a ‘hybrid’ floor, with some components of the old one coupled with some more recently installed. There was no intention of taking a real step back, as the Maranello team was convinced of the choice made in France and of the progress that the latest floor evolution represented for the car. It was just an analysis of old and new components, so as to collect more data for analyzing and understanding what is not going in the right direction, especially after the introduction of the DT39 / 2022. And maybe to understand if the old floor could perform better than the new one with the setup changes? In Maranello they deny this idea, according to F1 experts Piergiuseppe Donadoni and Paolo D’Alessandro, as reported by formu1a.uno.
It was Carlos Sainz’s turn to bring the old floor to the track. The answer was the expected one: the new floor is better than the old version and the development is correct, with consistent data between simulator and track. The Maranello team has found some answers it was looking for but not all of them yet. In the second free practice session, the floor specification used since the French Grand Prix was mounted on the F1-75 car of the Spaniard, once the data collection was completed, carrying out the whole weekend with the latest package of developments, which were giving excellent results both at Paul Ricard and on Friday in Hungary.
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