2024 Scuderia Ferrari F1 Team

[FittingMechanics]

I think its time for them to consider changes to the track. In terms of strategy, I agree, it was like Singapore, but you're not completely hopeless for an overtake in Singapore.

There's not that much room for changes, but something that would make a big difference is to remove the nouvelle chicane and making tabac slower. At least you get one big braking zone following a straight.

It's the cars, the cheapest and most effective way for F1 to increase overtaking is to reduce car size. A smaller car will increase overtaking on all tracks of the calender. Present day and future.

Yes but changing the cars is not a quick or easy fix. For Monaco - they need to institute two stops minimum. That would be quickest way to improve it slightly.

Other thing is what emag said - that would make sense but with how close the walls are and the trees, it seems like it is not an easy thing to do and even then, who know how much it would help.

[chrstphrln]

I think its time for them to consider changes to the track. In terms of strategy, I agree, it was like Singapore, but you're not completely hopeless for an overtake in Singapore.

There's not that much room for changes, but something that would make a big difference is to remove the nouvelle chicane and making tabac slower. At least you get one big braking zone following a straight.

It's the cars, the cheapest and most effective way for F1 to increase overtaking is to reduce car size. A smaller car will increase overtaking on all tracks of the calender. Present day and future.

Yes but changing the cars is not a quick or easy fix. For Monaco - they need to institute two stops minimum. That would be quickest way to improve it slightly.

Other thing is what emag said - that would make sense but with how close the walls are and the trees, it seems like it is not an easy thing to do and even then, who know how much it would help.

There was a mandatory pit stop, there was a red flag.
What if there are two red flags?
Should we then introduce three stops the following year?

There are things that just happen.
Monaco produces exciting chaos one year, boredom one year and perhaps boring chaos the next.
This year, the boredom after the crashes was extremely pleasant for me.
I'm also glad that it didn't come to the feared pit stop chaos during an SC phase.
It's horrible when a dozen or more cars pull into the pits and you have to wait ages until the slot is free to pull out.
Fortunately, we were spared this lottery.

Look at the F2 race. The different strategies and the mandatory pit stop created excitement there and in the end the VSC produced an unexpected winner.
A good race despite the few overtaking manoeuvres.
The F1 race could have been the same. But it wasn't. But that doesn't mean you have to rebuild the principality or downsize the cars.
Even if the latter is necessary in any case!

[codetower]

Excellent weekend for Charles and Ferrari! Congratulations to Leclerc for finally winning at home. But man, what a stressful weekend for Charles fans. Is he going to bin it in qualifying? No, good. Is he going to hold position at the start? Yes, check. Is he going to hold AGAIN? Will there be a mechanical failure? Will he touch a wall? Even after the race… will they disqualify him for a “worn plank”? Man, all the prior Monaco disasters sure made this more stressful than it needed to be!

[deadhead]

Yeah, Leclerc has always been in control.

I think he had even more speed in hands but decided to minimize risks as much as possible.

Not sure what others think, when I look at the pole lap, it doesn't look like he's on the edge. One tiny snap was braking into Grand Hotel hairpin (T6) and that's it. Looks just as relaxed as 2022 pole that he was going to improve a lot in second go if Perez didn't crash first.

2024 Monaco pole

2022 Monaco pole

Yes it seems to me that he is able extract time without looking like he is about to loose it like VER last year for example. This is around Monaco specifically. Piastri very similar.

[Fakepivot]

Excellent weekend for Charles and Ferrari! Congratulations to Leclerc for finally winning at home. But man, what a stressful weekend for Charles fans. Is he going to bin it in qualifying? No, good. Is he going to hold position at the start? Yes, check. Is he going to hold AGAIN? Will there be a mechanical failure? Will he touch a wall? Even after the race… will they disqualify him for a “worn plank”? Man, all the prior Monaco disasters sure made this more stressful than it needed to be!

yes, why is everyone saying it was a boring race it was not for me

[S D]

I have 2 comments:

1) I'm surprised with Ferrari's race pace given how we'd all said slow speed corners were their weakness. Can it be that the car suffers in slow speed corners only when it needs to be configured to tackle both slow and fast speed corners, indicating some different flaw in the design? Red Bull had their own difficulty with suspension settings this race, but McLaren did not and Ferrari was still faster than them, which to me indicates that it was not simply down to suspension. I'm in no way shape or form knowledgeable on this though; also

2) The pit strategy was a bit strange for me. I don't understand why Sainz decided to pursue Piastri so closely and risk damaging his tyres. I would have thought backing up Norris would have been the best option for both Ferrari and Sainz. For Ferrari, that gap would have meant Piastri could never try to pit and for Sainz it meant he would have had a few more seconds in the event of a safety car that could have worked in his favor. The strategy used by Ferrari only ended up working because Russel decided not to pit. Had he have gone in, Norris would have gone in. We can all agree Verstappen showed us that having a new set of tyres does not guarantee an overtake, but I still think Sainz pushing Norris back into Russel would have been the safest option. Thoughts?

1. I think the consensus is that Ferrari is good over the bumps. This is a bumpy track. It also used to be very good in traction.

2. Agreed, I think the main reason here is that Sainz and his engineer were not willing to play a total team game. They probably entertained the idea of attacking Piastri (and even put some pressure on him). They didn't want Sainz to drop back too far - they even told him to stay at least within 5 seconds of Piastri.

By staying close to Piastri they also had the option of the "undercut" to Piastri if Norris went to the pits.

They wanted Sainz close to Piastri so in case of a SC Piastri can't get a free pit stop.

2. I think that they were playing a team game. Keeping Sainz within striking distance keeps Piastri honest, meaning that if he tries a lung on Charles and looses time then he comes under attack from Carlos. Piastri also needs to keep an eye on Sainz and may have to drive defensively at times.

I don't think that there was any need to back up Norris, Charles was in effect backing up everyone. With Charles maintaining an already slow pace and Sainz were to have driven even slower then Sainz would lose tire temperature thereby risking not being able to finish the race on this set of tires.

Should we continue to speculate better strategies when this one was perfect. No one can predict when a safety car will come, or even if one would come. All teams do the best that they can given the information and situations as they arise. Most times we give too much credit to teams when the credit goes to being lucky. After the fact it's always easy. Doing a head sim in real time never fails for an arm chair quarterback because he is never proven wrong because the team doesn't do the action when the fan wants.

[Xyz22]

I was comparing the laptimes in Q3 in 2024, 2023 and 2022. Verstappen 2023 third sector was only around 0.1s slower than Leclerc 2024 S3, while in sector 1 and 2 Verstappen was 1s slower !
The RB19 was an absolute monster in sector 3 last year when you factor in that Leclerc was the fastest in that part of the track in quali.

[deadhead]

I was comparing the laptimes in Q3 in 2024, 2023 and 2022. Verstappen 2023 third sector was only around 0.1s slower than Leclerc 2024 S3, while in sector 1 and 2 Verstappen was 1s slower !
The RB19 was an absolute monster in sector 3 last year when you factor in that Leclerc was the fastest in that part of the track in quali.

Or maybe VER just had a very good S3? I dunno I still think LEC was somewhat compromised by the engine change so we go 1.9:xxx next year

[AmateurDriver]

I think this weekend was very important in terms of car balance aswell. Every time in qualifying we never found time, especially from friday to saturday. This weekend was different, the car was great in quali, and we weren't surprised by how much the others improved either. The tire deg didn't seem worse but it's Monaco so you never know. I think it was a big step forward.

Not so fast my friend. What they achieved this weekend was more or less the bare minimum to keep hope of second place in WCC alive. The car has a strength, in tight cornering, there is something good to build on. But now they need to step up the pace in developmental race. As far as we have seen, the McLaren is still a better all-rounder. They need to introduce the corrective updates as soon as possible (the Imola package was, in their own words, a kind of delayed launch spec) and sort the Q3 thing out definitely, when it's close not only at Monaco races can be won on Saturday.

[Vanja #66]

On Sunday, Leclerc didn't just brake his own Monaco "curse" but Ferrari's as well. Not since 1979 and Jody Scheckter's win from pole, 45 years ago, did a Ferrari driver win from pole in Monaco - somehow not even the Kaiser did it in his best years.

[MTL79]

I have 2 comments:

1) I'm surprised with Ferrari's race pace given how we'd all said slow speed corners were their weakness. Can it be that the car suffers in slow speed corners only when it needs to be configured to tackle both slow and fast speed corners, indicating some different flaw in the design? Red Bull had their own difficulty with suspension settings this race, but McLaren did not and Ferrari was still faster than them, which to me indicates that it was not simply down to suspension. I'm in no way shape or form knowledgeable on this though; also

2) The pit strategy was a bit strange for me. I don't understand why Sainz decided to pursue Piastri so closely and risk damaging his tyres. I would have thought backing up Norris would have been the best option for both Ferrari and Sainz. For Ferrari, that gap would have meant Piastri could never try to pit and for Sainz it meant he would have had a few more seconds in the event of a safety car that could have worked in his favor. The strategy used by Ferrari only ended up working because Russel decided not to pit. Had he have gone in, Norris would have gone in. We can all agree Verstappen showed us that having a new set of tyres does not guarantee an overtake, but I still think Sainz pushing Norris back into Russel would have been the safest option. Thoughts?

1. I think the consensus is that Ferrari is good over the bumps. This is a bumpy track. It also used to be very good in traction.

2. Agreed, I think the main reason here is that Sainz and his engineer were not willing to play a total team game. They probably entertained the idea of attacking Piastri (and even put some pressure on him). They didn't want Sainz to drop back too far - they even told him to stay at least within 5 seconds of Piastri.

By staying close to Piastri they also had the option of the "undercut" to Piastri if Norris went to the pits.

They wanted Sainz close to Piastri so in case of a SC Piastri can't get a free pit stop.

Wouldn't that have meant a 10 second window though? Wouldn't Ferrari have been able to have backed up Norris 8 seconds further back of Piastri, thus negating any SC risk and any risk that Piastri would put on fresher tires?

[bluechris]

They could had give to Piastri the possibility to do a pitstop but in the limit. Maybe MCLaren could took the bait and Sainz could end up 2nd.

[Xyz22]

Last year in Canada the SF 23 didn't perform badly and Ferrari got a decent result considering the terrible qualifying session.
Red Bull had a smaller advantage than usual as well IIRC.

After all even the SF 90 was competitive there

[dia6olo]

Yeah, Leclerc has always been in control.

I think he had even more speed in hands but decided to minimize risks as much as possible.

Not sure what others think, when I look at the pole lap, it doesn't look like he's on the edge. One tiny snap was braking into Grand Hotel hairpin (T6) and that's it. Looks just as relaxed as 2022 pole that he was going to improve a lot in second go if Perez didn't crash first.

2024 Monaco pole

2022 Monaco pole

When I saw the 2024 lap from onboard, car looked planted and he never flirted with the barriers, it actually left me feeling there was likely another 2 + tenths in that car...

[Vanja #66]

Last year in Canada the SF 23 didn't perform badly and Ferrari got a decent result considering the terrible qualifying session.
Red Bull had a smaller advantage than usual as well IIRC.

After all even the SF 90 was competitive there

Max already complained about their Canada chances. Watch them dominate every session of the weekend.

I don't think Ferrari will have no chances, but now is the best time for RB to reassert their hold. McLaren will be right up there as usual. Barcelona will be a very trialing test for Ferrari