Why Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari SF-24 lost 20 points of downforce (about 0.8s per lap) in Monaco Q1. Charles Leclerc's Ferrari SF-24 lost about 0.8 seconds per lap in the first part of Monaco GP qualifying.

For Charles Leclerc, the Monaco Grand Prix wasn’t just a simple walk in the park as it might have seemed from the outside, considering the superiority the Monegasque demonstrated on the home streets behind the wheel of the Ferrari SF-24 car. The Ferrari driver experienced a couple of tense moments that could have undermined the confidence of someone who was finally building the perfect weekend after several years of disappointment in front of his home fans.

At the end of the last free practice session in Monte Carlo, the one which took place on Saturday morning before the very important qualifying session, an alarm went off for engine 1 that the Maranello technicians had decided to bring back into the race: after thorough checks on the 066/12 6-cylinder turbo power unit, all doubts were dismissed and the engine could return to rotation on a track like Monte Carlo where maximum power is not a determining aspect in terms of overall lap performance.

A sensor went off, and the Maranello engineers at the Remote Garage discovered that there was an abnormal temperature in the lubrication system. To avoid risks, it was decided to quickly dismantle the power unit to install engine 3 on the SF-24 single seater of the Monegasque driver, which was the power unit used by Charles Leclerc at the Imola circuit a week before.

For the Ferrari team, it was a super job that was not planned, but in Q1 it took Charles Leclerc only one lap to understand that everything had been reassembled perfectly, and after dominating free practice, he was ready to go in pursuit of pole position.

However, the pit wall didn’t have time to breathe a sigh of relief before another alarm went off. This time it was the aerodynamics team who suddenly saw more than 20 points of aerodynamic efficiency disappear from the right side of the front wing.

Charles Leclerc had not reported hitting curbs, guardrails, or walls, so there was some growing apprehension because in Q1 there was a risk of not making it past the first cut due to the terribly small gaps between the cars. On lap 3, Charles Leclerc set a 1.12.839, which was not in line with previous performances. He did a cool-down lap and then went again: 1.12.452. Slightly better, but not enough to hope to stay safe.

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TV images solved the mystery: a piece of plasticized advertising cloth that was covering a rail had come off the protection and covered a crucial area of the front wing. It was as if a hood had been put on the SF-24, preventing the outwash effect near the side endplate, so the air was not pushed outside the front wheel, cleaning the wake, but instead generating a disastrous aerodynamic blockage.

Charles Leclerc was promptly called back to the pits, and after the mechanics removed the banner, he resumed driving with the determination and confidence we had appreciated in the free practice sessions for the Monaco Grand Prix: on the eighth lap, he comfortably set a 1.11.653 that put him out of any danger. From that moment on, no one could contain him until he secured the 24th pole position of his Formula 1 career, as two world champions before him had done, namely Niki Lauda and Nelson Piquet.

Ferrari and Charles Leclerc gave a great demonstration of their ability to stay calm in the only moments when the perfect weekend in Monaco could have turned into another unlucky episode like the previous ones the Monegasque had experienced in the Principality. Discovering how eight-tenths of performance per lap disappeared in an instant must have been a highly stressful moment even for Bryan Bozzi, the new track engineer who managed to keep his driver calm. Once the piece of plasticized advertising cloth was removed, the missing 20 points magically reappeared. Then in Maranello, they could start dreaming. And there are some who still haven’t woken up.