Scuderia Ferrari did not find the expected performance at the 4.657-kilometre Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya last Sunday, encountering several issues that weighed on the Barcelona weekend. Overall, three factors can be identified that stopped the SF-24 car in Spain, starting with bouncing, which forced the Maranello engineers to find a compromise, penalizing other aspects.
The Circuit de Catalunya has long been considered the exam track, the litmus test to understand the field values and the qualities of the cars on the grid, thanks to its characteristics that make it one of the most challenging circuits in the world championship. For this reason, even though the calendar has changed over the years, as has the layout of the track, the Spanish round was one of the most anticipated this year, to find answers to the many doubts about the value of the grid.
Some questions have been answered, while for others it will be necessary to continue waiting for future Grands Prix, also because this season is showing how things can change within a few races. However, there is one team from which more was expected, namely Ferrari. On one hand, it is true that the Catalan track did not best suit the characteristics of the SF-24, which had already shown in other world championship events that it was lacking in high-speed corners compared to both Red Bull, the absolute benchmark, and McLaren.
On the other hand, there were also elements that penalized the weekend beyond the SF-24’s own expectations, starting with the return of bouncing, as admitted by Carlos Sainz on Saturday after qualifying. This aspect negatively impacted the value of the SF-24 not only in very fast corners but also in other secondary aspects, in what ultimately turned out to be a sort of compromise that did not pay off.
The return of bouncing
Reviewing the season, Ferrari had never really presented this phenomenon, not even in Saudi Arabia, an event that instead put Mercedes in crisis, revealing old problems. Due to its aerodynamic and mechanical characteristics, Barcelona is one of the most demanding tracks in the world championship, where bouncing can appear more acutely. The hope for Ferrari is that it is an isolated incident, linked to the peculiarities of the track and setup errors in the way the car was configured, with the aim of finding downforce from the floor.
Austria already presents itself as a different test, on paper more suited to Ferrari, while a more truthful examination could be the Silverstone round, although the British circuit also has fewer high-speed support corners compared to Barcelona. However, focusing on the events of the Iberian round, this problem had a rather clear and marked specific weight.
The need to limit bouncing had negative effects on secondary aspects, especially in terms of setup, requiring the sacrifice of other elements to compensate for the problems. To manage bouncing in high-speed corners, it becomes necessary to intervene mechanically, finding a stiffer setup to keep the car steady during cornering. From this perspective, the aerodynamic and mechanical aspects of the car must work together, almost depending on each other.
However, when forced to find a compromise setup, which can be effective in fast corners by helping to limit bouncing, the opposite problem also arises. It is still a compromise, which consequently penalizes other parts of the track. The SF-24 has always had an inconsistent behavior in medium-low speed corners, especially in longer ones where good front-end work and stability are needed. The problem already appeared in the Chinese Grand Prix, for example, but not in other races with tighter slow corners.
An unstable compromise car
In the second sector of Barcelona circuit, Ferrari also paid for those compromise choices, with a car that often proved not only stiff but also very unstable. Charles Leclerc’s mistake in turn five during qualifying partly stems from this general instability observed in various sections of the track, not only very fast ones, where the drivers had to work a lot with the steering wheel, but also in medium-low speed corners where a softer setup could help.
Although Charles Leclerc generally struggled at the start, switching to a setup more similar to Carlos Sainz’s, this instability also negatively affected one of the Monegasque’s strengths, braking. This issue impacted not so much the act of braking itself, but the ability to carry speed into the corner, leading the Maranello team to reconsider the definition of deceleration points more conservatively.
In effect, these two elements, bouncing and general instability, represented two interconnected factors that ended up penalizing not only the car’s overall performance but also the driver’s confidence in multiple areas of the track.
The track management factor
However, beyond purely technical considerations, something also did not work as hoped on the strategic level, even though, in this case too, the two aspects have some points of connection. The position swap between the two Ferrari drivers in the early part of the race generated various controversies but also had a double impact on the race. Chronometrically, it did not represent a significant loss of time, as Frederic Vasseur rightly pointed out in interviews. However, it weighed more on the track position and tactical choices between the two drivers.
Even if Charles Leclerc had been ahead, Ferrari would likely have adopted a similar strategy given the effectiveness of the undercut, also choosing the ideal moment knowing that Mercedes would still have had to react for Russell. The discussion would then have shifted to the second stint. Estimating fuel-corrected times, considering the fuel difference at the time of the stop, the gap between Charles Leclerc’s pace on the medium tires and Hamilton’s is minimal, highlighting the good pace of the Mercedes driver. Additionally, it should be noted that in the first part of the stint, the seven-time world champion had to fight with Carlos Sainz, while in the middle part, he was behind George Russell: when he had clear air, his times dropped, showing there was room for improvement.
Extending the stint to benefit from fresher tires makes sense, but there is a limit where extending too much does not allow for recovering the accumulated gap. For reference, Charles Leclerc’s gap at the time of Lewis Hamilton‘s second stop was greater than at the first stop: added to this is the fact that, if the tire offset in the first stint was eight laps, in the second stint, it was halved, with a similar error to that made by McLaren against Max Verstappen.
Lewis Hamilton’s last stint is difficult to take as a reference because, once he got ahead of George Russell, the team advised him to be cautious in his approach, so much so that pronounced lifts in fast corners can be seen, especially towards the end, when the chance of reaching the podium became increasingly concrete. The choice with Carlos Sainz to switch to the hard tires, however, had two motivations: partly the pace, which, even fuel-corrected on the medium, was slower than his teammate’s, but also Ferrari’s need to cover George Russell’s strategy, diversifying the race tactics and having a driver covering the rivals.
Although Charles Leclerc had a good pace on the medium tires, it is not excluded that if he had been the driver forced to stop early in the first stint, that role would have fallen to the Monegasque. It is no secret that Ferrari had also proposed the hard tires to Charles Leclerc for the final stint before finally switching to the soft.
Three elements – bouncing, instability, and strategic or track decisions – somehow put Ferrari in difficulty last weekend at the Circuit de Catalunya in the Spanish Grand Prix, interlinking with each other.
Leave a Reply