The performance of the Ferrari cars was not exciting in the qualifying session for the 2021 Styrian Grand Prix, but for all the free practice sessions we had the clear feeling of a team committed to trying something different than in recent races to fully understand the problem with the tires, which revealed itself in a disruptive way in the last Grand Prix in France.
What the numbers tell, and what the drivers and Laurent Mekies confirmed after qualifying, is that, in an attempt to improve tire management in the race pace, the SF21 went on track with a set-up with a lot of aerodynamic downforce, thus giving up on trying to cover the gaps in the power unit on the long straights, but with the hope of recovering with interest what was sacrificed in qualifying in terms of race pace and tire management.
To remove any doubts, we then calculated the aerodynamic downforce index for the cars of Max Verstappen, Lewis Hamilton, Charles Leclerc, Lando Norris and Pierre Gasly to get a rough idea of what differences we saw. Once again we specify that the downforce index is fully reliable at the same power, so the result we obtain by applying it to different cars becomes a mere indication and not a certainty.
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