Imola GP: Ferrari SF-24 loses 0.2” per lap in second stint, no wear with Hard tire. Charles Leclerc lacked pace in the second part of the Imola stints.

Ferrari finishes the seventh weekend of the 2024 F1 season on the podium. Charles Leclerc brings car number 16 to the finish line in third place. The updated SF-24 car is very good and especially close to direct competitors, but as in Miami, it cannot fight for the win. Carlos Sainz has to settle for fifth place behind Oscar Piastri. The Spaniard lost the position to the Australian during the pit stop cycle, as the team kept him on track hoping for a Safety Car that never came.

Otherwise, McLaren confirms itself as the second force with Lando putting together a really competitive race. The Briton pushes all race, keeps the number 16 red car at bay, and in the final part of the Grand Prix, even tries to catch Max Verstappen. The Dutchman wins again, extending his lead in the standings. However, the Dutchman no longer has the comfortable advantage of last season, and to reach the fourth title, he will have to struggle throughout the season, it seems.

F1, Ferrari in overheating at the rear

The first stint of the race on the Italian track was the most complicated in terms of tire management. By analyzing the telemetry data and the times of the top 10 finishers, we can see that, the first section, run on Medium tires, more or less mirrored the results after 63 laps. The focus of the first run is on the performance of McLaren and Ferrari. While Max Verstappen, with the best pace, tried to push his car to the limit, risking going off track, the battle behind him was intense.

First of all, the duel between Oscar Piastri and Carlos Sainz. On several occasions, the Australian had the chance to overtake the Spaniard using DRS. However, the Imola track’s straight does not favor overtaking, effectively freezing the Australian’s position behind the Spaniard and giving crucial importance to pit strategy. The situation between Lando Norris and Charles Leclerc was different. In the first part of the stint, the Miami Grand Prix winner tried to follow Max Verstappen’s pace but suffered degradation at the rear. This forced him to slow down.

The tire wear data for the first stint of the Imola race gives more insight into what happened to the young McLaren driver. Lando suffered overheating at the rear due to an imperfect balance of his car. The setup of the MCL38 stressed the rear tires, forcing the Briton to slow down after the tenth lap.

Charles Leclerc’s pace was more consistent, as he managed his yellow-banded Pirellis better with his Ferrari, although he also had to deal with rear temperatures outside the optimal range. Max Verstappen, all in all, had a similar performance drop to Charles Leclerc, but the RB20 allowed the world champion to be 0.3 seconds faster per lap.

The situation with Mercedes is more critical. The black and silver arrows started off well, but their race strategy was not ideal. Lewis Hamilton, several times during the first stint, went off-track. These moments affected the seven-time champion’s average pace and tire degradation, compromising part of the race.

The race strategy ended with a single stop. In the second part, the drivers used Hard tires that showed no wear even with track temperatures exceeding 40°. The top drivers tried to be gentle with traction to extend the tire’s life until the end of the race, managing them well to limit wear. On average, the top drivers ran the white-banded tires for 37 laps, with the pit strategy benefiting Oscar Piastri’s race.

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The Australian took advantage of Carlos Sainz’s excessively long first stint and a better pace on Hard tires to overtake the Spaniard by one position. The pace set by the top drivers showed a much smaller gap compared to the first part. Between Lando Norris and Carlos Sainz, the fastest and slowest in the second stint, respectively, there was a 0.3-second gap per lap, with the Englishman gaining 0.1 seconds on the world champion. The second part of the race showed similar and relatively low degradation among the drivers compared to the number of laps completed.

Charles Leclerc lacked pace in the second part of the stint with the Ferrari: something was missing in terms of consistency due to the rear tires being outside the ideal temperature range. The Monegasque driver closed in on Lando Norris but couldn’t maintain the Englishman’s pace after going off-track at Variante Alta. On the contrary, Lando improved his pace in the second half of the stint with Hard tires after figuring out how to manage the tires to avoid overheating the rear axle.

This allowed him to close in on Max Verstappen, especially thanks to an excellent first sector. The world champion struggled in turns 2 and 6, losing an average of 0.3 seconds in the first sector to Norris. Finally, Oscar Piastri and Carlos Sainz, respectively with McLaren number 81 and Ferrari number 55, had a similar pace, with the Spaniard suffering the most degradation among the top drivers. The Australian, after overtaking the Spaniard in the pits, showed a very good pace on track, maintaining a gap from the Spaniard, who nevertheless managed to reduce it slightly.

All in all we can certainly say that the historic Ferrari team was able to maintain the pace of the top drivers overall. According to the men in red, the full effect of the updates on the SF-24 car has not yet been maximized. The reason is quite clear: the layout of the Imola track was not suitable for bringing and maximizing the updates. The Canadian race, after the very peculiar Monaco track, will undoubtedly be crucial to understanding the true level of the modified Maranello cars by the technical team led by Enrico Cardile.

Charles Leclerc’s gestures after the race showed a certain disappointment. This is obviously understandable, given the expectations for the new aero package brought to the Imola track and the potential seen at times during the race, which could have raised hopes for much higher podium steps than third place in front of the tifosi. However, analyzing the situation with clarity, what we find is a Ferrari that has definitely made a leap forward, effectively staying within the same tenth of a second as McLaren for most of the race, sometimes better, and, excluding the first stint, was practically never slower than Red Bull. The 7-second gap Charles Leclerc had at the finish is even misleading, as in the final laps Max Verstappen and Lando Norris were pushing for the race win, while the Monegasque, having been cut off from the fight for first place after the off-track at Variante Gresini, simply managed the car to the finish line.

At Suzuka and in China, the other real tracks encountered so far, Ferrari had gaps of over 20 seconds from the winner (who, moreover, was cruising for half the race) and never gave the impression of being in contention, quite different from what was seen at Imola. And on the hills of Santerno, the new package was only making its debut, with surely ample room for improvement. For example, we saw a significant increase in the aerodynamic load on the red car, which seemed to go on track perhaps even too loaded compared to the competition, suffering a bit on the straight, but decidedly consistent in the race stints, where Red Bull and McLaren were the ones to fluctuate, while Charles Leclerc was always able to follow his pace with a certain consistency, at least until the mistake at Variante Gresini, which then caused a clear loss of tire temperatures and contact with Lando Norris, subsequently precluding the possibility of staying with McLaren for the final laps, with a potential three-way sprint finish. Considering the three phases of the race we saw (namely with full load, medium load, and low load of fuel), Red Bull and McLaren alternated at the extremes (full and low load), while Ferrari prevailed in the medium condition, indicating an excellent overall balance, as well as potential to be sought in more extreme conditions. In the second stint, Max Verstappen’s Red Bull was practically never faster than Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari (aside from the mistake), with the gap decreasing from 10.5 seconds after the pit stop to a minimum of 6.6, before the sprint finish between Lando Norris and Max Verstappen forced the Dutchman to push to the limit in the final laps of the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix.

Source: FUnoanalisitecnica