The surface at the Circuit Paul Ricard is very smooth and will help above all to limit rebound problems, especially on the Mercedes W13 cars of Lewis Hamilton and George Russell, but also for Scuderia Ferrari and other teams because they should be able to run lower to the ground without running into problems.
Red Bull expects to be very strong in the French Grand Prix and believes it will be able to capitalize on the qualities of its RB18 car that practically disappeared in their home race in Austria. The bouncing frequencies have also been attenuated thanks to the implementation of a small rake set-up with the passing of races, however it continues by choice or necessity to have a narrower bottom edge that generates slightly less load at high speeds.
The stage beyond the Alps will also be interesting for the comparison between Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz: the driving style of the Spaniard can confirm him very close to the Monegasque in terms of performance but, despite being predictable, it is not known – nor completely clear – if he will have to take a grid penalty with Ferrari understandably not wanting to confirm anything from this point of view in order not to give advance information to competitors.
The aerodynamic configurations chosen by the teams will be interesting to see: will many confirm the Silverstone wing? Red Bull hopes that Ferrari will have to go back to using more wing but it is precisely a hope because they fear that the Maranello car will now run stably with less wing, thus using less the medium-high load wings (less efficient) which were seen at the beginning of the 2022 Formula 1 season. From this point of view, it will be essential for Ferrari to work constantly in producing improvements by updating the floor. Being able to increase the load from the floor has not only primary effects, such as an efficient generation increase, but also secondary ones, for which the Power unit also benefits, clearly the weak element of the Italian package. An efficient floor not only offers more free load but decreases drag, something that helps reduce resistance in straight lines, fuel consumption, and thermal effort on the straights. Automatically, the hybrid tuning will also be less conditioned.
Show your support for Scuderia Ferrari with official merchandise collection from Puma! Enter the online Puma Store and shop securely! And get your F1 tickets for every race with VIP hospitality and unparalleled insider access. Click here for the best offers to support Charles and Carlos from the track!
The 2021 French Grand Prix was the most disappointing race of the season for Scuderia Ferrari, not in terms of one lap pace (Carlos Sainz Jr. started the race from fifth place, while Charles Leclerc from P7), but mainly in terms of race pace and tyre degradation, as both drivers finished outside the top ten. Ferrari had been relatively competitive on the medium tyres in the first stint, but lost a lot of pace compared to their rivals when they changed to the hards. This was the first time Ferrari had failed to score in the 2021 Formula 1 championship Following that result, the Maranello team made efforts to rectify the tyre-wear issue, concluding that the car setups they were using had caused wear-inducing understeer. Now the Italian side wants to avoid the issues from last season and hopes to be able to further reduce the gap to Red Bull with just one more race to go until the summer break.
Leave a Reply