Scuderia Ferrari has admitted it has not been able to so far solve the “real mystery” which most Formula 1 teams have been facing in the 2022 season, as they attempt to understand why the car performance has fluctuated so much during the year.
The new generation of ground effect Formula 1 challengers has led to several unexpected situations this championship, as teams have struggled to understand the behavior of their cars, which at times put them in difficult moments at race weekends where they expected to be strong based on the track layout and characteristics.
On the other hand, this has also meant that at times teams found themselves in situations in which their car performance far exceeds what they had anticipated ahead of the race weekend. Scuderia Ferrari started the season string, with victories for Charles Leclerc in the Bahrain Grand Prix and the Australian Grand Prix, but since then some power unit reliability issues and some questionable strategic calls have led to missed opportunities for the Maranello team in the first part of the season, when Ferrari still seemed to have the best car on the grid for most races.
However, since the Hungarian Grand Prix, the F1-75 car lost it’s strong race pace and then struggled a lot at the circuit de Spa-Francorchamps, only for it to prove much stronger in the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, despite the fact that both race tracks need low downforce and good aero efficiency.
Ferrari English senior performance engineer Jock Clear was asked about this situation and admitted that the Maranello team’s best engineers have no clear explanation for why there has been such varied performance and why the F1-75 car was not able to show it’s true potential at times:
“Honestly, if we really knew those things, we’d have the golden bullet. It’s really tricky to work these things out. You talk to teams that are finding really good performance at a race, and you talk to teams that dropped back, and there is a real mystery to unravelling all of it. That’s why this job isn’t simple, and that’s why it’s so intriguing for all of you guys [the media] and all of us guys.” – Jock Clear explained, as reported by Motorsport.
The Ferrari English senior performance engineer is aware that the teams needs to understand what went wrong in Belgium, but also points out that the as teams gain more experience with the new generation of challengers, all teams start to find more performance by gathering more data and knowledge about how the new cars behave in certain conditions.
“Honestly, we don’t know all the answers, and we still don’t understand exactly what went on in Spa. We have some ideas, and we’ve obviously acted on those. We’ve come to Monza, a similarly low downforce circuit like Spa, though different, and we feel that it looks like we’ve understood some of what went on at Spa. It may turn out later in the year that we find out some more things, but we’re continually learning. None of us know all of the details, because it’s a relative sport, and all the time it’s a relative sport, and you don’t know what everyone else is doing, there’s a load of areas where you have to take your best guess almost.” – he continued.
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While Jock Clear does not believe that the new ground effect cars are very difficult to understand, he explains the fact that the regulation is still new means there is a lot of work for teams to do before they will be able to fully capitalize them.
“I think it’s just because they’re so new. There’s always going to be a steep learning curve with a new development or a new set of rules, and everyone is on that steep learning curve. We saw that in the beginning of the year. A lot of people were saying [to us]: ‘Why is your car so quick early in the year?’ It’s a relative sport. Maybe we arrived just understanding it a bit better and some people were just finding out where their cars were. That was the great thing about coming into a year with a new regulation. There’s obviously the high performance aspect of your car package, but there’s also coming to understand that car, and the drivers’ understanding of how to drive it. With drivers of Max’s [Verstappen] quality, Charles’ [Leclerc] quality, Carlos’ [Sainz] quality, you expect those guys to be on it straight away. They’re human, and they’re working on their talent every day, and they have improved during the year. Maybe they’ve understood more. All of that comes together at different rates and different times, and in different teams. When it’s a relative sport, you can’t really know all the answers.” – Ferrari English senior performance engineer Jock Clear concluded.
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