In Formula 1, things don’t always go as planned. Scuderia Ferrari clearly demonstrated this last weekend when, at the beautiful circuit on Notre-Dame Island in Quebec, the worst of the worst manifested for the Maranello team in the Canadian Grand Prix, despite the high expectations before the race weekend. The situation was so extreme that it seems almost unbelievable. Yet, it’s all true. The limping Prancing Horse dashed the enthusiasm of millions of fans around the globe in one fell swoop. It did so in such a definitive manner that it will undoubtedly be remembered in the annals of the sport.
In a recent episode of the Formula One Technical Analysis podcast, the hosts were joined by their esteemed guest, Italian journalist and well-known Ferrari insider Leo Turrini. The master recounted the feats of the red team in Montreal, seeking a rational explanation for Scuderia Ferrari unexpected setback and performance. He delved into the reasons behind this terrifying scenario that affected Ferrari’s pace and results at the 4.361-kilometre Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve in Montreal, a team that had shown real competitiveness up to Monte Carlo, with Charles Leclerc securing a splendid race win on the streets of Monaco in front of his home fans and a Ferrari team that was eager to compete in Canada with the clear goal of confirming the progress made with the SF-24 updates introduced at the Imola circuit a few weeks ago, which up until the Montreal weekend had proven to be effective.
According to Leo Turrini, something happened that defies rational explanation. It’s understandable that Ferrari might go to Canada and be a bit slower than the McLaren MCL38 of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri or Max Verstappen’s Red Bull RB20. However, when you realize during Saturday’s qualifying session, without any warning, that Williams is faster and the same goes for the Visa Cash App RB cars and Aston Martin, it means that something seriously went wrong. The only thing missing was for Haas and Stake, powered by the Ferrari 066/10 engine, to be faster than the SF-24, completing an unbelievably absurd picture at the Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve, one that could not have been anticipated after the Friday free practice sessions.
For this reason, the Italian journalist and Formula 1 expert is inclined to believe that there is a strong hope it was just a misstep. A weekend where the red team understood little to nothing. A sort of uncalculated anomaly. A bug that “infected the system” and consequently generated this great apocalyptic disaster. The Ferrari insider supports his reasoning with an interesting conjecture: until Friday, both team principal Frederic Vasseur and Charles Leclerc kept emphasizing that Ferrari could compete for the race victory, fighting for pole position and trying to lead the race.
This consideration shows that no one within the Italian F1 team remotely expected such a catastrophe. A tremendous disillusionment. The experienced journalist with several links to the Ferrari world is inclined to think that the Prancing Horse completely botched the setup of the SF-24 single-seater. He clings to this hypothesis because other logical explanations are hard to digest for the supporters of the historic team, as the scenario that unfolded seemed too dramatic to be true.
We return to the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix in Italy, where Scuderia Ferrari failed to get ahead of rivals Red Bull and McLaren. However, in that race, Charles Leclerc crossed the finish line practically on the heels of the car driven by the three-time Formula 1 world champion. This can happen, and it is part of the competitive landscape we are experiencing, where the balance at the top is so delicate that a small detail marks the competitive difference between the various teams. But when a surreal context paints Saturday, where an SF-24 is outperformed by almost everyone, well clearly something did not work at all.
Starting from the back of the grid is never easy. It complicates everything. And never mind Charles Leclerc, who, as we know, suffered a power unit failure caused by a malfunctioning control unit. A headache that cost the engine about 80 horsepower, roughly half a second per lap in terms performance on wet track and up to 1.2 seconds as the track began to get dry up. But if we look at Carlos Sainz’s performance, who, as far as we know, did not suffer any real problems, we see that his performance was also very limited. For this reason, returning to the discussion about wrong setup solutions seems more than logical.
A clear inability to maximize tire performance for Ferrari, in this Canadian F1 weekend that only brought disasters. The scenario was so bad, according to the Italian journalist, that it is highly worth believing it does not correspond to reality. Better to file it away as a simple episode and start focusing on the next round of the 2024 Formula 1 championship, the Spanish Grand Prix at the Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona. After all, Ferrari has already won two races this season, and before Montreal, the gap in the constructors’ standings from Red Bull was not big at all. A gap that could even be reduced in a single race if everything went well for the Italian side and everything went badly for the Austrian team.
From a certain point of view, perhaps the double retirement made things less bad than they could have been. Yes, because if we think about it without Charles Leclerc’s engine trouble and Carlos Sainz’s close encounter with Alex Albon, the two Ferrari SF-24 cars could have easily finished outside the points, and perhaps, in this case, explaining such a performance to the fans would have been even more difficult and painful. According to the Italian journalist, something doesn’t add up. Fortunately, the weekend is over, and thoughts are already on Spain, where Ferrari has the duty to return to the top, without any more excuses.
Source: FUnoanalisitecnica
