Gusts of wind, soft tires, and traffic on the out lap are among the factors that explain Red Bull’s significant jump in Q3 and the difficulties faced by Ferrari drivers.
Max Verstappen achieves three out of three and takes pole position for the Australian Grand Prix. Up to Q2, it seemed that pole position was within Ferrari’s reach, but this expectation fell short at the crucial moment of qualifying. In Q3, Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez improved by 45 and 35 hundredths of a second respectively compared to the previous session, unlike Carlos Sainz, who did not lower his time, while Charles Leclerc actually worsened by a tenth. Several factors explain the key moment of qualifying for the Australian Grand Prix, as outlined by Pirelli.
At the start of qualifying, Max Verstappen was still complaining about the understeer experienced in the free practice sessions via radio. However, the world champion later reported feeling a surge at the crucial moment of qualifying, with the car suddenly coming to life. This was a stark contrast to the experience of Charles Leclerc, who felt perfectly comfortable with the car on Friday. “I didn’t do a good job in FP3 and lost the feeling with the car, but I still managed to complete the lap and had confidence that the feeling would come back in qualifying. Instead, I lost it even more,” Charles Leclerc told SkySport.
This incident suggests an influence from the track’s evolution, with a shift in balance towards the rear. However, according to Simone Berra, Pirelli’s Chief Engineer, asphalt temperatures played only a marginal role. “Honestly, it’s not a factor, the temperature remained quite stable,” Simone Berra explained to FormulaPassion. “Ferrari was still fast in the morning with cooler temperatures, as well as in Q1 and Q2 when it was slightly warmer. Then the temperature dropped a bit, but honestly, I don’t think it made a big difference.”
The Challenges with the Soft Tire
The Australian qualifying took place with the softest tires in the Pirelli range, which are highly performant, provided their narrow usage window is hit. “The C5 is the softest compound in the Pirelli range,” Berra continued. “If already the C4, which we saw in Jeddah, is so performant but with a very narrow grip peak, the C5 is from the same family of compounds and behaves very similarly. If you can’t balance the front temperatures with the rear, you risk not having the front tires ready, ending up suffering from understeer and having to apply wide steering angles. By the end of the lap, this leads you to oversteer, due to the initial lack of front grip.”
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“It can also happen the other way around, where you have the front ready at the start of the lap but end up with the rear overheated, which then loses performance, becoming unstable,” the Pirelli engineer continued. “It’s a very delicate balance. Certainly, Max Verstappen put together his best laps in Q3, but I also believe that the wind had an influence today. In qualifying, it increased, with more significant gusts compared to FP3. This didn’t help the lap itself, because if you’re unlucky and encounter a gust of wind in the wrong spot, it causes instability at the rear.”
Managing Traffic
Besides the wind, managing tire temperature was the key to the Australian qualifying, a task influenced by two factors. Simone Berra further explains: “The first is related to the preparation lap. Some launched straight into their attempt, while others did two tire preparation laps. Different philosophies, then, just to have the right temperatures and perfectly balanced axles.” – he pointed out.
“Another factor always concerns tire preparation, but is related to traffic. Someone didn’t have the opportunity to perfectly prepare the lap, encountering either faster cars or others in front who were completing their preparation lap. In these cases, you end up moving to dirtier parts of the track. Melbourne, being a street circuit not used during the season, is particularly dirty off the racing line. This doesn’t help, as it causes you to lose grip and prevents you from completing the preparation lap as you would like, without reaching the desired temperatures.” Not by chance, the Red Bull pit wall sent their cars out first in Q3, ensuring a clean preparation lap and putting Max Verstappen in the best conditions to claim his third pole position of the season.
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