F1, Ferrari: why SF-24 struggled in Montreal and how issue can be fixed. Why the Ferrari SF-24 is highly dependent on the tire pressures used.

With Scuderia Ferrari out of the running at the 4.361-kilometre Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve in Montreal, Mercedes and McLaren tried to capture the race victory in the Canadian Grand Prix by alternating in the lead in various moments of the race. However, neither team was perfect enough to stay ahead of Max Verstappen, who managed to secure his sixth win of the 2024 Formula 1 championship and the 60th of his career. The Dutchman has won 66% of the races and remains unreachable, with Charles Leclerc still the closest pursuer despite a horrible weekend in Montreal. On the constructors’ front, Red Bull is more vulnerable, continuing to have significant margins when Max Verstappen wins but still relying on only one driver, which means the loss could have been more significant for the Maranello team, who will hope that Sergio Perez continues his poor run also in the second part of the season.

At the same time, the bad result in the Canadian Grand Prix should not shift the overall balance on Ferrari to negative. Despite the disastrous weekend at the Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve, Ferrari is in the fight and, under normal conditions, has reduced the gap from the top. After the Monaco Grand Prix, as well as after the pre-season testing session in Bahrain back in February, Ferrari was not expected to win the 2024 Formula 1 championship but to challenge Red Bull for the constructors’ title and defeat the Austrian side on specific circuits. Now the Italian side must seriously fend off the attacks of a McLaren that has become very solid in terms of performance, while Mercedes, despite the excellent signal given in Canada, must prove that its progress is solid and not the result of rather extreme conditions encountered last weekend.

Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz had developed a good start to the weekend in mixed conditions with stable track temperatures, offering positive comments following the free practice session on Friday. However, on Saturday everything changed: temperatures soared, combined with a non-abrasive track surface with low degradation, complicating the car’s operational index and making it highly unstable. Essentially, the operating window remained unreachable, and the drivers could not push adequately on the tires. This issue had already appeared in the Chinese Grand Prix, partially limiting the SF-24’s performance at the Shanghai International Circuit. Here, the red car dramatically lost its way with the correct settings, but the engineers’ task was not simple because there was a flaw that could not yet be resolved without updates.

In qualifying, the SF-24 is highly dependent on the pressures used and secondarily on the compounds.

As is known, engineers can modify very few things in parc fermé, one of which concerns the pressures. Pirelli provides the minimum values that need to be set, ensuring the integrity of the carcass, with minimum values below which it is not possible to go, while it is possible to use reasonably higher starting pressures. There is no need for a maximum index simply because it is dictated by the significant decrease in grip above certain values, which are well known by the teams. The pressures on a stationary tire are about 10 pounds per square inch lower than the stabilized pressures with which the car runs. The sooner that certain value is reached, the sooner the carcass heats up internally and works correctly. Obviously, every car has its own usage range, and if it were easy to obtain a car that works perfectly with all tires, everyone would achieve it. No car is ideal in every range of corners and temperatures; in this sense, even the best car is simply the one with the fewest issues. But this also explains the characteristics of some cars, which seem particularly good in the cold like the Mercedes W15.

Now let’s take a look at why Ferrari cannot be stable if temperatures and layout do not help the SF-24 single-seater.

The reason is that increasing the pressures to heat up the carcass faster can slightly reduce grip, thus decreasing aerodynamic load in the qualifying session. The car tends to slide more easily and becomes aerodynamically unbalanced. By keeping pressures as low as possible, more grip is certainly obtained, but the car does not quickly generate internal temperature during warm-up. This is highly dependent on the layout and is related to the settings of mechanical stiffness; stop-and-go circuits, for example, are not ideal. It also depends on ambient temperatures: in China, there was a warning due to the very slippery surface, which had been somewhat revised after years of disuse. It is clear that in Canada, Ferrari encountered the most adverse and unstable conditions possible: temperatures, track surface, layout, which were all factors that became difficult to manage given the characteristics of the 2024 Ferrari F1 single-seater, as explained by F1 journalist Giuliano Duchessa for formu1a.uno

The SF-24 car is designed not to eat up the tires, and it has demonstrated this in the first part of the current F1 campaign. In long runs with high temperatures, it is the most consistent car up to the last lap if there is high degradation; on the other hand, it is too gentle if the tire is new. In Montreal, the problems of Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz prevented a more accurate verification, but the main issue was hitting the window in qualifying. The failure forced the Ferraris out of Q3 by a few thousandths.

More aerodynamic load is needed to push the tire down and produce more energy; indirectly, this should improve the quality and preferences of pressure use when grip is not high and conditions are poor, as happened in Canada. For this reason, the Ferrari technicians are making a significant effort to bring new parts for the next round of the season, the Spanish Grand Prix, including a new floor that should add downforce, also to respond to the competition. Red Bull and Mercedes have already declared that they will bring an evolutionary step to their cars at the Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona.