The upcoming race weekend will be a crucial appointment for the 2024 Formula 1 championship, particularly for Scuderia Ferrari. For the championship, it will be a race that must confirm McLaren’s significant progress with the latest updates, in order to keep the fight open with Red Bull and especially Max Verstappen; for the Milton Keynes team, on the other hand, more updates are on the way, and it will be a test bench to understand how much the competition has really reduced the gap. It will be especially a decisive appointment for the future of Scuderia Ferrari, which has been the second force so far but is now overtaken by the Woking team, at least judging by the result and the performance seen in the Miami Grand Prix. The Italian side, however, has always pointed to the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix weekend as the stage for the first package of developments that will substantially modify the SF-24 single-seater and would bring a performance increase of about two or three tenths.
One of the most difficult things to achieve – and maintain – with these ground-effect cars is the correlation between the virtual world (namely the data collected from the wind tunnel, Computational Fluid Dynamics and simulator) and the real one, namely the data collected from the track. Even today, Mercedes often struggles in the dark because of this disparity in terms of data. Some high-profile technicians, such as McLaren team principal Andrea Stella and Ayao Komatsu from Haas, have also revealed how often different results are found on the track compared to the wind tunnel, sometimes negative but sometimes positive, as happened with the VF-24. In Woking, an important step forward was expected with the updated MCL38 car, but it took confirmation from the track to breathe a sigh of relief. Only after the initial feedback was the 4-tenths progression confirmed, therefore turning into reality with a good basic setup found as well. And this is what is also happening within the walls of Maranello, where there is much anticipation for the evolution of the SF-24 car, which has been studied and planned for some time in the ‘virtual world’.
The production of parts has begun, but there has never been a real intention to introduce these components in advance at the Miami International Autodrome in Florida. At the Imola circuit, there will also be a return to the normal race format after the Chinese Grand Prix and the Miami Grand Prix which took place based on the Sprint format, with the first two Sprint Races of the 2024 Formula 1 season. Ferrari will therefore have three free practice sessions in order to study and verify that the new parts behave as expected, but not only! It is not new that with the introduction of large aerodynamic development packages, Ferrari, if possible, carries out a filming day at home track in advance. It happened already in 2023 with the SF-23 when, before the Austrian Grand Prix, the new front wing and the new floor were tested at the Fiorano racing track. It was an explicit request from the technical director who wanted to confirm the simulation data on the track.
This year too, team principal Frederic Vasseur and Italian aerodynamicist Enrico Cardile, Ferrari’s head of the chassis area, have once again planned a testing day to bring the SF-24 single-seater in its 2.0 version on track. Therefore, between Thursday and Friday at the Fiorano circuit, Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz will have the opportunity to drive the Prancing Horse’s car for 200 kilometers – 100 kilometers each, a single-seater which has performed well so far but has reached its performance ‘peak’ and now needs to be updated to be able to make a significant step forward. The two main drivers will then gather the first indications about the updates that will say what the future, at least for this Formula 1 season, will be for Ferrari and if a fight with Red Bull (and McLaren) is possible in this 2024 F1 championship, as confirmed by F1 experts Giuliano Duchessa and Rosario Giuliana for formu1a.uno.
The Miami Grand Prix saw three major teams in the spotlight, namely McLaren, Red Bull, and Ferrari, but with three different views of what the weekend brought and meant. The victory of the Woking team also came thanks to a series of fortunate circumstances, particularly the timely entrance of the Safety Car, but it is undeniable that, when given the chance to express its pace in clean air, Lando Norris showed a superior rhythm to that of rivals.
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For Red Bull, the American stage represented a weekend where they failed to capitalize on the usual potential of the RB20, on which they also need to work finely, compounded by the approach of their opponents. Max Verstappen never found the ideal feeling with the car, neither in qualifying nor in the race, and then had to deal with damage to the floor when he dislodged the bollard at the chicane.
It is precisely in this context that Ferrari’s weekend fits: on one hand, the Maranello team looks optimistically towards the future but on the other hand is also aware that it needs to continue working to reduce a still-existing gap. The Scuderia has not yet brought any update packages, which will only arrive at the next appointment in Imola, but in Miami, this issue weighed only to a certain extent because the fundamental aspect, beyond pure performance, was to find a way to make the tires work at their best.
McLaren was the confirmation of this. After a challenging qualifying on the soft tires, where they never managed to exploit them to the fullest, in the race with two more durable and flexible Pirelli compounds, such as the medium and hard, the MCL38 magically found the pace to stretch its legs and soar towards the race victory. On a circuit like the Miami International Autodrome, overtaking is not easy, so much so that even the Woking team itself was quite surprised after the sprint despite opting for a fairly low-downforce setup.
That’s why track position became crucial. While it’s true that Piastri was able to overtake Charles Leclerc in the early part of the race, the Australian never managed to pull away, with the Monegasque always well anchored behind him.
Fred Vasseur, the Team Principal of the Scuderia, wanted to underline how the gap from the RB20 is narrowing, which pushes Red Bull to take more risks as compared to when they had the safety margin like in the past. Last year, precisely at the Miami circuit, Max Verstappen put together a great comeback, but it is also true that Ferrari and Mercedes at the time clashed with an aerodynamic concept that would be changed in the following races. Furthermore, the temperatures recorded last weekend reached almost 50°C as far as the track surface is concerned, resulting in much higher temperatures than those of 2023.
Factors that, combined with a feeling far from perfect, especially due to annoying understeer in fast sections, have also pushed Red Bull to play defensively in the first stint. From a purely strategic point of view, the choice to call Charles Leclerc back to the pits early was not wrong, but it makes sense in the decision to want to shuffle the deck, trying to overtake Piastri first and foremost. The tire’s durability would not have been a problem: with the hard compound, the entire race could be covered in terms of pure degradation, as the only concern was thermal degradation, a different phenomenon. In the few laps covered with new tires, which did not require a particular warm-up phase, the Monegasque began to reduce the gap even from Verstappen, pushing the rivals to react.
The Italian car therefore ends its first life cycle well, in the upper part of the standings, but it is clear that, as admitted by Fred Vasseur, now an additional step is needed. In Miami, the updates played a less impactful role compared to other tracks, highlighting more the teams’ abilities to optimize the package based on certain conditions. But this is a discussion related to the characteristics and conditions of the US track: from Imola, the first major innovations will arrive, to improve certain basic concepts of the SF-24 and approach that “global” competitiveness of a Red Bull team that, certainly, will not stand idly by.
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