bananapeel23 wrote: ↑18 May 2024, 20:53
I suspect you are overestimating the power of top speed here, as well as just how much top speed the Ferrari is lacking. Driver comments very much seem to imply that track position is king and that overtaking into turn 1 (even with DRS) will be VERY difficult. If you get out of the chicane on in first place on lap 1, you stand a very good chance of keeping said place at least until the pit stops.
Being more loaded, Ferrari have bigger base drag than RB and especially McLaren cars, they have a very slippery rear wing. So when Ferrari tries to overtake with DRS the speed difference will be around 8-10kmh lower than either RB or McLaren overtaking Ferrari. Unless Ferrari somehow have 7-8 tenths better race pace, will be very very hard to get ahead on top.
LM10 wrote: ↑19 May 2024, 00:42
This is starting to become a trend because it has happened on almost every race this season (not the beam wing in particular, but also and mainly the rear wing). Strange, considering the team has a million times more data than any of us. It begs the question whether they suffer from PTSD from last season. If yes, it's about time they overcome it. I don't want to talk about conservative wing choices anymore.
Generally speaking, since I'm more of a "glass half-full" person, even though this is the first time this season I watched the qualifying end with a bit of a disappointment (this is thanks to good form in practice sessions - I didn't pay attention to gained numbers from media), looking more into the whys and hows helps put everything more into perspective. While the upgrade package was not a small one, it also was not as huge as McLaren's who basically changed everything on the car from front to back. As per Sainz Ferrari's first upgrades were never going to adress the issues which showed up on track this season. Also, Imola was not going to play into the strengths of the car, certainly not as much as into McLaren's.
I'm inclined to say that the team still needs to further understand their new package and alone from this there's scope for more performance extraction. Optimizing the car is not an easy task. There's a reason McLaren used flow-vis in practice sessions despite having brought their upgrades in Miami already.
Let's see what tomorrow brings. With a bit of luck everything is possible.
Well, what McLaren started with and RB switched to yesterday surprised me quite a lot to be honest, using Australia level loads in Imola means a few things:
- they have better top speed and acceleration after 200kmh
- they are less loaded in medium-high speed corners so they can compensate with slightly softer suspension (without scraping the plank too much) to benefit low speed corners
- if the deg is higher than expected, they will suffer (but this is very unlikely)
Ferrari had a good Friday, but the track came towards McLaren and RB yesterday. Perhaps RB will struggle again in the race like they did in Miami and Australia, but I don't think they'd choose this setup without being sure of it. McLaren looks very, very good and Norris will be quick today.
