The win secured by Scuderia Ferrari Monegasque driver Charles Leclerc at the Red Bull Ring in Spielberg was the result of an impressive advantage over Max Verstappen and Red Bull, which was better tyre management. Even from the television footage alone, it was pretty obvious that the Ferrari F1-75 had the upper hand on RB18 in the Austrian Grand Prix on Sunday afternoon, thanks to a great balance of the F1-75 challenger, which the Maranello team was able to gradually gain over the weekend.
The corner entries on both F1-75 of Charles Leclerc and his Maranello teammate Carlos Sainz, at least until the Spanish driver’s Ferrari burst into flames following an engine failure which ended his race was, was very sharp and precise, but what proved even more important was the traction displayed on the exit of the corners.
In the second sector, the twisty area of the Austrian circuit, Ferrari’s 2022 Formula 1 car showed its potential in full and gained a lot of lap rime on the Red Bull RB18. Indeed, the traction on Red Bull’s cars seemed to be affected by a high level of degradation on the rear tyres and also on the front-left tyre – a rather strange situation for the Milton Keynes team based on what was seen in other races this championship.
But why did Red Bull suffer from tyre issues in Spielberg?
The RB18 proved very efficient in limiting tyre degradation during the last few races of the 2022 Formula 1 championship, but in the Austrian Grand Prix it was Ferrari who managed to find a better setup. The situation came as a big surprise also to the Red Bull mechanics, including Max Verstappen’s race engineer, Gianpiero Lambiase, who was not able to provide an explanation for the high degradation experienced on both the Medium and Hard tyres.
As Red Bull was searching for a possible explanation, they looked at the fluctuating temperatures over the previous two days but that did not provide a precise answer, given the fact that the air temperatures were almost identical. This means that a higher load on the car – as a result of low air density due to higher temperatures – can be dismissed as a hypothesis.
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Most likely the situation was caused by a basic configuration and setup of the car for this weekend, that could have been too geared towards low-fuel running. This helped Red Bull in qualifying and on Saturday for the Sprint race, but in the main event on Sunday, as cars had a lot more fuel on board, the balance of the challengers changed considerably, with the effects being felt through increased tyre degradation for Red Bull, which ultimately helped Ferrari extend its first stint and manage the race.
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