Charles Leclerc celebrated his second win of the 2022 Formula 1 season in the Australian Grand Prix at the Albert Park Circuit last weekend, while Max Verstappen, the only opponent who seemed able to challenge Charles in this start of the championship, had to retire with an engine failure. Carlos Sainz’s race also ended prematurely, but for very different reasons.
After Saudi Arabia’s second position, Charles Leclerc drove an impeccable race at Albert Park, starting from pole position. After maintaining the starting position, his F1-75 immediately went away from the rest of the group, crossing the line with a good 20.5 seconds ahead of Checo Perez.
Charles Leclerc showed how to take the F1-75 to a different level. Although in qualifying the fight with the Red Bulls was very close, at least until the penultimate attempt, in the race Ferrari was absolutely unstoppable. For Red Bull, the most worrying aspect is the reliability, with another DNF for their main driver, but also the 20-second gap to Charles Leclerc, which could have been evem more if not for two safety car moments.
Charles Leclerc and the car from Maranello, in projection, would have had an average gap of 6 and a half tenths per lap from Max and his RB18. Unpredictable ahead of the Australian weekend, at least in these terms. A perfect combination. “We were all surprised by our pace”, admitted the Monegasque at the end of the race as he confirmed that he expected at least “on paper”, at the start of the weekend, to be behind Red Bull. “It was therefore a nice surprise”, he then concluded.
But in Maranello they developed the car well for the race, as explained by Giuliano Duchessa and Piergiuseppe Donadoni for formu1a.uno. Something that was partially missing in Saudi Arabia. The weekend got off to a good start, thanks to a great job done on the Maranello simulator. Ferrari started with a set-up that mainly protected the rear, then the long runs of the FP2 showed possible graining on the front, more pronounced on the Mediums.
For this reason, two fundamental things were decided between Friday and Saturday. The first: to increase the front load to limit the triggering of graining. The most loaded front wing of the two brought in Australia was chosen, the one with the last upper flap straight and not slightly cut. The Albert Park track has not only been revised in the layout but also in the surface; Pirelli itself, through the mouth of the boss Mario Isola, had warned since Friday that the slip, despite the increase in grip, could continue even in the race, given the non-high-pressure treatment of the asphalt to eliminate excess of asphalt binder. In fact, the alloy continues to re-emerge in the newly laid asphalts, removing the adhesion of the cars, the 2022 cars, which intrinsically already suffer from understeer, to be compensated adequately. Ferrari played the card of increasing downforce, even though it was already set with a less efficient aerodynamic configuration than Red Bull from Friday.
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The second is a technical consequence of the first choice, made possible by feedback – positive for now – in terms of the reliability of the Power Unit during the first two events. A small increase in power of 5 HP has been approved to counteract the improved efficiency of Red Bull in Australia, which thus manages to generate greater speed on the straight. This small but important gain could also be used in Imola as Ferrari, with the first unit, is also working a lot on reliability. “We are most interested in finishing the reliability data collection program, at least up to race 5 [Miami]” – formu1a.uno informs, before the Maranello team will introduce a more aggressive and above all lasting second power unit.
The small increase in performance, estimated at just over a tenth of a second, made it possible to fight for the pole position with greater chances, as well as being able to generate more important speeds to defend against Max Verstappen in the race. Moreover, indirectly this could have helped Carlos Sainz in the comeback, through a strategy that could have certainly been effective without the incidents at the start.
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