Ferrari took pole position for the Italian Grand Prix in its Monza home race, coming close to a virtual front row with Carlos Sainz, third at the end of qualifying but still forced to start from the back of the grid due to using new power units components. An unexpected result for the Maranello team, which came after very difficult races, at Spa-Francorchamps and Circuit Zandvoort, with balance problems that have undermined the competitiveness of the F1-75 in terms of race pace.
The analysis made by Ferrari traced these critical issues to secondary effects associated with the latest floor specification introduced during the French Grand Prix. Already at Paul Ricard, the Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz noticed that the balance was no longer optimal, partially shielded by the pure speed of the car which was still expressed at Le Castellet, but then fully emerged in the next rounds.
With this in mod, Ferrari brought back the previous version of the floor at Monza, installing it on Carlos Sainz’s F1-75 car in the first free practice session for the Italian Grand Prix in order to carry out comparative tests with the last specification.
Already starting from FP2, however, the Maranello team returned to the latest version with both drivers, confirming it for the qualifying which was marked by Charles Leclerc’s pole position and now Ferrari will use the new floor version in the race. In the press conference on Saturday morning, Mattia Binotto had in fact highlighted how the use of the old floor in Friday’s free practice was due to a simple plan of data collection: “The reason for the car’s poor balance was due to the aerodynamic updates. It was a question mark for us. This is the reason why we made the test on Friday here in Monza, even if it may not be the most suitable circuit to carry out these tests, but we did it to collect data to be analyzed once back in the office and try to come up with a good explanation of what happened, so at the moment we do not have a clear and definitive answer” – Mattia Binotto explaned.
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At the moment for Ferrari, the risk that the problems of correlation and / or interpretation of the set-up encountered with the latest updates could have been so critical as to make the latest version of the floor less efficient than the previous one seems to have been avoided. The test performed in the Monza free practice will instead provide useful data to understand how the behavior of the F1-75 has changed, to correct the set-up accordingly with greater understanding of the dynamics at stake. The three-week stop following the Italian Grand Prix could not have come at a better time for the Scuderia, which will enjoy precious time to analyze the data and prepare the season finale in the best possible way and then start again with more continuity in the 2023 Formula 1 season.
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