Monaco: a legendary track, difficult to interpret, one of a kind. On the unusual Thursday dedicated to free practice, it was the SF21 of Scuderia Ferraris who prevailed on the streets of Monte Carlo. Is it true glory? This is one of the questions we will try to answer in today’s analysis. We might as well immerse ourselves immediately in the data coming from the track, the ones that really matter at the end of the day. As was normal to expect, the teams concentrated their work on simulating qualifying, which is essential to be able to bring home a good result on Sunday. Monte Carlo is the circuit where it is essential for the car to provide the driver with confidence and this is what the engineers try to do with the setup. Research benefited from the Friday rest day in which each team can work on its own issues. When you get back on track on Saturday, the story can be very different. The teams are now able to extract the best from every single corner, so we shouldn’t be surprised if the values on track change.
Although experts expected Ferrari to be strong in Monaco, it was difficult to hope for such a day. The gearbox problems that Charles Leclerc suffered in the first session did not take away the confidence of the Monegasque. The Ferrari driver did not hit the perfect lap, making a mistake when exiting the swimming pools. However, putting together the three best sectors, not even Max Verstappen would have been able to overtake the Maranello driver. For the record, it must be said that Max was unable to unleash the full potential of his RB16B. The Dutchman complained of temperature problems for the compounds. Cold front and back in overheating, a classic problem of Monaco and not easy to solve. We’ll see if the Milton Keynes team can solve these headaches by Saturday. It will certainly take a lot of work on the simulator. Same goes for Mercedes. The lack of DAS will be very important here, as the Black Arrows presented an understeer behaviour of the car, which in fact made driving more difficult. Nevertheless, the performance of the German cars was good.
Analyzing the following graph, what jumps into view is the magic of Charles Leclerc in the middle sector. Two tenths advantage over Hamilton and Verstappen, four to Carlos Sainz and Lando Norris. The first sector is certainly the section in which the SF21 will struggle most from Saturday onwards. It takes a lot of power to tackle the climb up to the Casino area. Despite the use of manual overboost in this portion of the track, the deficit of horses compared to Mercedes and Honda is felt. At the moment the times in this section are in line with those of Hamilton, while Verstappen loses 1 tenth. We await the feedback on Saturday, when the gap between one power unit and the other will be widened.
In the final sector the best performance is that of Carlos Sainz. Here too Hamilton is lurking, while the Dutchman still loses 1 tenth. Norris , with his McLaren, is close. Once again we recall how the British team tends to improve a lot from Friday to Saturday. First two complicated sessions for Ricciardo, unable to find the feeling of his teammate with the car. Although the Australian still received a lot of indications during FP2, in the central sector he lost even half a second to the other MCL35M . Immediately behind we find Gasly once again. The Frenchman showed a good performance, although on more than one occasion he complained of an annoying understeer probably caused by the difficulties in activating the front compounds. Teammate Tsunoda is further behind , a sign that the experience on this track has a certain weight.
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