Scuderia Ferrari introduced its first major upgrade package for the Spanish Grand Prix weekend, which the Maranello team confirmed gave positive indications during Friday practice at the Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona and helped Ferrari in their qualifying duel with title rivals Red Bull, by allowing the F1-75 car to be run lower without being affected by bouncing as much as in the previous rounds of the 2022 Formula 1 season.
Charles Leclerc dominated the Barcelona weekend so far and took his fourth pole position of the season, as the improved F1-75 car seemed superior to Red Bull’s RB18 in terms of one lap pace, despite the fact that Max Verstappen still managed to split the Ferrari cars by finishing ahead of Carlos Sainz.
The Italian side’s challenger has been very strong in qualifying all season but Ferrari is confident there is even more potential in the car which could not be used until now due to the porpoising effect generated by the new generation of ground-effect cars.
The first major updates for the F1-75 car at the Circuit de Catalunya included a new floor to better manage bouncing and therefore give the Maranello technicians the possibility of running the floor lower and gain performance in terms of speed: “That is one of the items for sure.” – Ferrari Head of Track Operations Claudio Albertini.
“We know these cars are much more performing when they’re lower because of the efficiency of the diffuser so having this jumping is not helping. It’s a combination of stuff that goes in that direction.” – he explained.
The Italian side has brought a new floor, a revised rear wing and revised detail around the rear brake ducts. The outer vane on the entry to the venturi tunnel has been heightened and re-angled, with the goal of making it able to increase the air intake without suffering a lack of pressure.
Scuderia Ferrari was happy with the feedback from the on-track data gathered during the Friday practice sessions in Barcelona and as a result kept the update on the car for the rest of the weekend. At the same time, Ferrari took advantage of last week’s filming day at the Monza circuit to get a first impression of the upgrade and Claudio Albertini confirmed that “basically all” of the upgrade was run on that filming day in Monza:
“The mileage is quite short, but it’s useful because actually, you can do some dedicated manoeuvres that is difficult to do in a race track with the other car. I would say that it was helpful to give us confidence of what we were doing, because in the end, in this short time you cannot change things because [there’s] not enough time. But it’s important because then you can trust what you’re doing and you can have a better direction at the racetrack.” – he explained.
Scuderia Ferrari has carefully evaluated its upgrades in this start of the season, hence the Spain package was what team principal Mattia Binotto had described as its first “main” update. This is because the Maranello team is extremely extremely carefully about how to manage its spending given the budget cap restrictions. It puts an additional emphasis on upgrades working well on-track and correlating with simulations.
“If you do a development and this development is not giving the expected result then it’s a waste of time, and this money you spend you cannot recover. “It is a double thing which is not good. So for sure It is encouraging because it tells us to have confidence to have a better way in spending money. Spending the money in the most efficient way is one of the key [factors] for top teams to have success because it’s very an important limitation you have at the minute.” – the Ferrari Head of Track Operations added.
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Charles Leclerc once again got the better of Max Verstappen in the fight for pole position just like last time out in the Miami Grand Prix, but the F1-75 car did not prove fast enough to keep up with the Red Bull in terms of race pace in Miami. Actually, the Italian side has developed a recent trend of using its tyres more aggressively as compared to its title rival, which was also the case this weekend in Spain, where the Red Bull was clearly better on long-run pace based on the data from the simulations.
But Scuderia Ferrari is confident that the upgraded F1-75 car will be kinder on its tyres once it is optimised and some set-up changes into Saturday have improved Charles Leclerc’s prospects for today’s race: “We’ve done a bit of a long run this morning, which was much better compared to yesterday. Unfortunately, we didn’t have any other references because we were the only ones doing long runs this morning. But it feels like we found something. Whether it’s going to be enough to challenge Max and Checo, I don’t know, but the feeling was better. So this is positive, but I don’t know whether it will be enough or not.” – the Monegasque driver explained at the end of the qualifying session for the Spanish Grand Prix.
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