Ferrari returns home from Barcelona certainly not satisfied with the result achieved at Montmelò. The fifth and sixth places of Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz, compounded by an internal struggle that certainly didn’t help either of them, perfectly capture the difficulties faced by the team over the Catalan weekend.
Yet, Ferrari arrived at the track near Granollers with some innovations aimed at improving the performance of the SF-24. These included more streamlined undercut sidepods to increase airflow to the floor, modified flow deflectors at the entrance of the floor, and, still speaking of the floor, a modification to the terminal part in front of the rear wheels and the diffuser.
In short, Maranello hasn’t been idle, but the track did not provide positive signals. At the end of the Spanish Grand Prix, Frédéric Vasseur offered a different perspective on Ferrari’s situation: the updates worked, but it’s likely that the real benefits will be seen in less than a week at the Red Bull Ring, home of the Austrian Grand Prix.
“We are satisfied with the numbers we have seen regarding the updates. First of all, everyone is improving, and it’s not certain that if you bring something new you will be ahead, but it’s certain that if you don’t bring anything, you will fall behind,” said the Ferrari team principal. “Everyone brings new parts every 2-3 races, and sometimes the focus is solely on aerodynamics, but it’s important to remember that development isn’t just in that sector. Sometimes we need one or two races to get the best out of the package we have. In the last 12 months, we’ve seen a sort of performance convergence linked to setup.” – the French manager pointed out.
“Next week, we will use the car better. Often we see new updates working well in the race following their debut. We’ve seen this with other teams as well. Sometimes it’s in the next race that everything starts to work well. Moreover, all the evolutionary packages are now smaller compared to 24 months ago.”
If the updates have been somewhat successful, what didn’t work on the SF-24 in Barcelona? Frederic Vasseur hinted that the problem was more about tire management during some qualifying laps on Saturday, which made the weekend more challenging for Ferrari.
“I think the most important thing in Barcelona is making good use of the tires. I don’t want to go into details and give information, but it’s about maintaining the potential of the tires throughout the lap in the various corners, and on Saturday we lost something in this regard because we were two-tenths behind McLaren and Red Bull. Barcelona has 14 corners, and we didn’t lose a hundredth in each one. We lost a bit more than a tenth per lap. For most of the lap, we did almost the same time as Lando Norris.” – the Ferrari team principal concluded.
