Let’s start by talking about Ferrari, which made a significant step forward on Saturday compared to Friday. Remember that Charles Leclerc was not using the updated floor specification, which was only given to Carlos Sainz. The base setup adopted on car number 16 did not work at all, with the Monegasque complaining of a lot of oversteer and general instability. After changing the car’s setup, the situation improved, but the major changes were made overnight, also thanks to the work done at the factory with the driver-in-the-loop.
The former Alfa Romeo driver congratulated the team on the new setting, which currently seems to offer much more predictability and, consequently, improves tire management, both on a single lap and over long distances with a lot of fuel on board. There were no setup changes during the final free practice sessions, not even regarding the front wing’s incidence. Carlos Sainz undoubtedly had more straightforward free practice sessions with fewer problems. Despite all this, the Ferrari remains a car with a predominantly oversteering balance.
This also affected the qualifying outcome, making it difficult to manage the tires and their temperatures. At the compound level, Ferrari worked hard to find a strategy that would maximize the time the tires could stay as close as possible to the ideal working range. In S1, they tended to generate too much friction, causing a departure from the reference temperature. In FP3, the technicians tried to improve tire usage and, consequently, S3 performance to reduce the gap.
To achieve this, they generally work a lot on the settings of various knobs, such as brake balance, differential, and various toggles. This way, they can better manage which axle to use more during braking and cornering. For example, by engaging the rear less during braking, they can keep the tire temperatures in check. Red Bull continued working on the setup during the final practice sessions, as yesterday Verstappen specifically complained about oversteer in the middle of the corner. Observing the onboard footage, the car appeared much more stable in various parts of the track.
In the final practice sessions, the Milton Keynes team worked on ‘marginal gains,’ optimizing the use of some knobs. Overall, they managed to maximize almost all points of the track. In the first qualifying run, Max Verstappen confirmed having a better feeling. The same goes for McLaren, which found a good overall balance and optimized tire management throughout the lap. The MCL38 and RB20 had a better overall balance than the SF-24.
These two cars had greater rear stability than the Ferrari, a factor that significantly affected the overall performance. With so many cars close together, every little detail made a difference. Mercedes also achieved a satisfactory balance, but once again, the factor that helped the German team the most was the track temperatures, lower than in other sessions. An overcast sky hid the sun, dropping the temperature from 44°C to 36°C. This undoubtedly helped the W15 to hit the tire operating temperatures very well during qualifying.
F1, micro sector analysis of qualifying: Ferrari does not optimize the passage through turn 3
Now let’s get into more technical details. We do this using data we can extract from F1’s GPS, which allows us to analyze each section of the circuit in detail. In qualifying, we had three or four cars at the same level. All the work done in practice must translate into a good result by the drivers. The stopwatch is the ultimate judge. Let’s examine the micro sectors of the qualifying session, making observations based on each driver’s telemetry and what we saw in the onboard footage.
On the main straight of the Catalan F1 track, the Ferrari SF-24 still suffers from a certain disadvantage in terms of drag. There’s still something missing to close the gap on Red Bull. On the main straight, the Italian car loses about 3 km/h to the RB20, while it loses nearly 2 km/h to the Mercedes. At the first braking point, the Ferrari confirms its advantage in terms of stability during deceleration. In the first chicane, however, the Maranello car slightly underperforms as it carries too much speed towards the apex.
There’s another interesting aspect worth considering. The two Ferrari drivers, in the long, wide-radius, banked corner (3), cannot gain as much as expected compared to Mercedes, which, in this section of the track, was the best. The Maranello team did not capitalize on this favorable sector, where they could have dominated to balance out losses in the other two sectors. McLaren holds its own in this section, losing only a fraction of a second.
Turn 09 is very fast, and the drivers try to take it flat out. Ferrari loses ground to the main competitors. In this type of corner, the SF-24’s rear remains quite stable, but as mentioned, the inherent oversteer does not allow for carrying a lot of speed through certain types of corners like this one. In the 10-11-12 section, we again see different approaches to limit excessive rotation. On his first Q3 attempt, Max Verstappen did not do a good job, but he improved on the second run, showing very clean driving.
Red Bull could have competed with Mercedes but didn’t manage to. Overall, we can conclude about the Brackley car: it seems the German team’s technicians tried to maximize tire performance, especially in the central sector and the final one. In S1, they tried to balance as much as possible with higher top speeds. A strategy that worked well. One final note: special praise to Lando Norris, who put together a truly remarkable lap, performing at the top throughout his final lap.
