Updates aside, the most important battle especially in the first year of a brand new generation of cars, is of course the battle with the stopwatch to get the best possible lap times. After the second practice session for the 2022 British Grand Prix, the verdicts from Silverstone are the following:
Carlos Sainz in front of everyone, then Lewis Hamilton, Lando Norris and Max Verstappen. It would seem a great start for Ferrari, however, some setup problems have emerged that will certainly need to be resolved on Saturday ahead of the qualifying session.
After a very competitive start on the middle compound, the Medium (C2), the F1-75 cars (especially Charles Leclerc) were not able to improve on the softer compound as much as expected. Even Carlos Sainz, despite being the fastest, did less than what the soft tyre can offer. Why did this happen? Because of the setup, as explained by F1 Technical Analyst Piergiuseppe Donadoni for formu1a.uno. Ferrari had not optimized it yesterday to make the C3 (Soft) compound perform at its best.
As the gradation of the compound decreases, by passing from a harder compound to a softer one, the more the rear gains strength. This is what happened in FP2 to the teams switching from Medium to Soft, with Ferrari being ‘surprised’ by the fact that the soft attacked so much on the rear. It is then up to the setup to compensate for the front, something that was not seen on the F1-75 so much so that both suffered from understeer up to the middle of the corner with the softer compound.
Silverstone is a purely front limited circuit and without the right setup to protect the front, there are corners like Stowe, Copse, Maggots, Beckttes but also Clubs itself that tend to ‘kill’ the front ones. “Today was a difficult day. In FP2 we had a lot of problems. With the soft I didn’t feel as comfortable as with the mediums.” – Charles Leclerc said at the end of the day. The Monegasque suffered more than his Maranello teammate and there is a technical reason. Charles Leclerc, like Max Verstappen, is a driver who prefers a precise front. Without a strong front, the Monegasque cannot perform as he would like and make an important difference as compared to Carlos Sainz.
With such heavy understeer, the front tyres on both Ferrari cars were done before finishing the lap. It is no coincidence that, compared to Hamilton, Sainz covered Turn 3 and Turn 7 with 10 km / h more, only to lose 3 km / h at Turn 13 and 15 to the seven-time world champion. Carlos Sainz lost about 3 tenths against the Mercedes W13 in Maggots, Becketts and Chapel.
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A problem that also affected the race pace, where Ferrari showed graining on the front left, more pronounced than its competitors, precisely due to the sliding of the front axle. It is no coincidence that the times scored by Carlos Sainz have risen more than the simulation on the mediums for Charles Leclerc. But the Monegasque still sees it in a positive way. “I am confident that tomorrow we will be competitive. It will just be about putting everything together ”. Because the F1-75’s potential is high also at Silverstone.
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