2024 Scuderia Ferrari F1 Team

[AR3-GP]

Leclerc wasn't on the podium because he had a bad qualifying. For his reputation, he only finished 0.005s ahead of Sainz (Leclerc mistake in T5). Considering that Leclerc is very highly regarded as a qualifier, the gap and mistake suggest a clear underperformance. The margin to P3 was only 0.03s so a simple 1 tenth more than Sainz would have put Leclerc in P3, and the podium.

Going on about Sainz is just avoiding this fact. Leclerc was never beating Hamilton after starting behind him. Hamilton/Russell made the difference on Saturday for the final place on the podium. Leclerc can look to his qualy performance, not Sainz, for his answers. This is exactly what Fred Vasseur also stated.

[Vanja #66]

WCC points after 10 races:

2004 - 383 (latest points system)

2007 - 275 (latest points system)

2017 - 275

2022 - 265

2024 - 270

After two hard weekends, season 2024 is basically aligned with 07, 17 and 22, it's interesting to keep track like this because you see how the scoring dynamic shifts wildly Ferrari should be thankful to McLaren drivers for keeping P2 in WCC in these two weekends, MCL38 is right up there with RB20 at the moment. Norris proves to be incapable of standing up for himself in any meaningful duel and Piastri is quite inconsistent in races.

This was definitely a suboptimal weekend, updates helped in some ways and didn't work in others. Seems like bouncing will need to be sorted carefully and we know solving this properly can unlock 2-3 tenths, which is what Vasseur suggests when saying they didn't extract the maximum. They were smart to push to the limit, there are a lot of options with suspension setup to take care of this without losing performance as we've seen many times in the last 2.5 years. Curious how RB, McL and Merc all moved towards Q setups between 23 and 24 and Ferrari went the other way too much.

Strategies were ok, there was nothing special to invent there. As for drivers, Sainz squeezing and pushing Leclerc more than others is nothing new, deciding not to follow previous agreements with the team is nothing new. Hopefully it stops now that Spain is behind us, but I have a feeling it will actually only get worse... Vasseur will not have an easy time with him until the end of the year. As for his pace, he was abysmal on Mediums and was matching Russell on Hards.

Leclerc's consistency in the race completely matched Verstappen and Lando even if the car was slower overall, he was actually quicker on Mediums than Max which is explained by fuel offset and was completely matching Norris in 2nd stint. His entire 20s gap was generated in the first stint, as soon as he switched to Mediums the gap had only minor variations. At the same time, as soon as Sainz pitted his pace improved by 6-7 tenths at least.

Unusually moderate temperatures for early summer in Barcelona helped Mercedes massively and Ferrari (well, Leclerc) suffered getting stuck behind them in the first stint, as was expected. If they can improve their Q pace in colder conditions and fix the bouncing this week in the simulator, they can fight at the top in Austria. As we noticed here a while ago, track position at the start is a huge thing again and focus on Qualifying is crucial.

[bluechris]

I forgot to mention that Sainz move was wrong, not because he passed but because he did it in his own mind for his personal reasons. The car has the troubles that i expressed above, both drivers need to protect their tyres, you don't attack to your teammate so early who is in his mind saving tyres.
If he felt he was faster he could had ask the team to pass which is the correct way of doing things because Ferrari is above any driver.
Vasseur needs to address this ASAP because more problems will come with this equal treatment. Qual is king between teammates and they need to respect that and be patient, even if i really like Sainz and i feel sorry for him, he pushes things for his own personal benefits.

[Sergej]

hi guys, not a Ferrari expert here, can you explain to me one thing ? What is going on with Ferrari upgrades ? I read on Italian press that they should have guaranteed 4 tenths in Imola and 2 more tenths in Barcelona for a combined 6-tenth improvement, that's a huuuuuuge of an improvement, where is it ? Ferrari started the season as easily second best car, now they are fighting with Mercedes, overtaken by McLaren; in Suzuka they finished 21s behind Max, yesterday 22s behind Max again, with a supposed 6-tenth upgrade vs a RB which clearly is not shining on development side....were those 6 tenths a real thing, or just PR press ?

I am not also expert here but here is what i see.
All this are on paper, the problem relies on the car that is new to the team and need a bit of time to optimize the setup. This cannot happen in the race where the parts are introduced. Other teams like RB have troubles in Friday but somehow their are able to extract the maximum of the car on Saturday/Sunday.
This is an area that Ferrari must improve ASAP.
Another problem is the completely different car than last year's car. In 2023 they were fast from the get go that's why they were fighting for Pole's but in the race their tyre's suffer. In 2024 i think they overcorrected this situation going to the opposite direction where the car needs much more time to be in optimal window so they loose pole's and they are not fast at the start of the races. This throes the drivers in bad positions and they need to fight their way up in the field where they overuse their tyres behind other drivers.
Count also the latest lower temperatures In Canada and in the race in Spain and you get this results.
Finally the others don't stay stable in progression. RB is RB, MCLaren with its new car hit the nail in the head and now they just optimize it more little by little and finally MB where the track is suit then they are fast now.

To me 2024 is a transition year with a new car philosophy that needs time and testing. From 2025 with the addition of Hamilton the team will have better info from the drivers because i strongly believe Hamilton can do that in addition to his experience especially on tyres.
Better days ahead imo so i am positive and i don't share the pessimist opinions here at all.
I just wish the Saint(Newey) will come to the team that will be the best imo.

thanks for your very good post, which I mostly agree with; honestly I was expecting from Ferrari a better development path after all the talk about a very basic launch car, great room for improvement, etc...actually I was expecting from them what McLaren is doing, seems to me that they are stuck in development limbo as typical from recent Ferrari; but maybe they just need time to dial in the upgrades (but then why to rush the Barcelona upgrade which was scheduled for Silverstone ?), surely the return of bouncing is quite worrying at this point of regulation era.

[venkyhere]

Going on about Sainz is just avoiding this fact. Leclerc was never beating Hamilton after starting behind him. Hamilton/Russell made the difference on Saturday for the final place on the podium. Leclerc can look to his qualy performance, not Sainz, for his answers. This is exactly what Fred Vasseur also stated. Leclerc was not retained to qualify 0.005s ahead of Sainz.

Partially agree with you that LeClerc is responsible for his poor (relatively) starting position. But given where they start on a Sunday, and given that the predecided optimal way to execute the opening stint was to not to take the life out of the softs, 'oh if LeClerc is so sensitive he should have done better in quali' is not an excuse Fred can justify the thing Sainz did. Yes, home race, yes wanting to prove that Ferrari booted the wrong driver - but where was Fred when he could see that Sainz was gunning for this throughout the previous lap - what is the priority ? optimal race for the team fighting for WDC when Redbull are running with one leg, OR 'we have hurt him already, let's not impose a team directive, let them race' ? Sainz has too much political clout within the team - good for him, all racing drivers are inherently selfish, that's human nature. But TP exists for a reason, to sniff out hara-kiri and prevent compromises from happening. 2023 Monza comes to mind, Fred was silent even then, could have resulted in double DNF.
Just saying - fixing and improving the car is one thing, it bodes well if fixing inter-driver dynamics isn't there on the table at all.

[Xyz22]

Leclerc wasn't on the podium because he had a bad qualifying. For his reputation, he only finished 0.005s ahead of Sainz (Leclerc mistake in T5). Considering that Leclerc is very highly regarded as a qualifier, the gap and mistake suggest a clear underperformance. The margin to P3 was only 0.03s so a simple 1 tenth more than Sainz would have put Leclerc in P3, and the podium.

Going on about Sainz is just avoiding this fact. Leclerc was never beating Hamilton after starting behind him. Hamilton/Russell made the difference on Saturday for the final place on the podium. Leclerc can look to his qualy performance, not Sainz, for his answers. This is exactly what Fred Vasseur also stated.

Without that mistake he would have been P3 yes, but still by a very small margin. This means that both him and Sainz got very close to the max potential of the car. We have been seeing this trend since the first race in Bahrain, that is drivers making minor mistakes when trying to extract the 100% of the car in quali trim. This car is terrible in qualifying and currently the slowest of the top 3. Also looking at the difference in the race it could be that Sainz is using setups more tuned for quali performance and this is why he has been able to finish that close to Leclerc.

Now Mercedes is there which means that Ferrari will start P5 and P6 quite frequently, that's pretty much it. Especially if they waste an entire day with their fastest driver, which is what happened this weekend. Leclerc was clearly not happy about it, factoring in that in this track you can only try a quali run very few times due to the high degradation of the tyres.

That Sainz pitted with George shows the 2 are among the worst tire managers on the grid.

Charles did great but Sainz was just way too poor at it here.

Sainz is absolutely not one of the worst tire managers of the grid. The same is true for George.
They are better than all the other drivers that are not Leclerc, Hamilton and Verstappen.

Right, I was perhaps exaggerating. But there's no way you don't include Lando in that. And I would say Albon also is very good at tire management after that race last year where he pitted only for the last lap.

I would also put Alonso ahead of him, and frankly Piastri did a MUCH better job than him here. So we are at 7 drivers that I think either improved enough to be better than him at this race or are just plain better than him.

So IMHO he was indeed the worst of the top teams with Russell, and considering that at least Russell was 1st and pushing in the 1st stint, at least he had an excuse for having high tire deg compared to SAI that instead was slower on pace and stuck behind Hamilton.

Piastri performance was embarrassing yesterday. He had the fastest car by a significant margin and finished P7.

Alonso i have literally no idea. Hard to understand his level of performance when is teammate is one of the worst driver in F1 recent history

[Vanja #66]

Without that mistake he would have been P3 yes, but still by a very small margin.

What mistake are we talking about exactly, is there a video? His best time through T5 was in his 2nd Q3 lap and he improved over his 1t Q3 lap as well, hard to call that run a mistake judging by telemetry

[Xyz22]

Without that mistake he would have been P3 yes, but still by a very small margin.

What mistake are we talking about exactly, is there a video? His best time through T5 was in his 2nd Q3 lap and he improved over his 1t Q3 lap as well, hard to call that run a mistake judging by telemetry

Micro correction after losing the backend a bit. We are talking a very minor mistake here.

https://x.com/Cl16__FanpageFr/status/18 ... 0695925772

The car was just mediocre over one lap.

[yooogurt]

What mistake are we talking about exactly, is there a video? His best time through T5 was in his 2nd Q3 lap and he improved over his 1t Q3 lap as well, hard to call that run a mistake judging by telemetry

[organic]

Cardile accepted the Aston Martin offer.

[CouncilorIrissa]

This is poor from Vasseur to fail at retaining him. This is bad, like really bad. Couldn't have come at a worse time.

[MV8]

Cardile accepted the Aston Martin offer.

Could this mean that Adrian is in advanced talks with the scuderia?

[yooogurt]

That was bad news, rly bad news damn.

[CouncilorIrissa]

Cardile accepted the Aston Martin offer.

Could this mean that Adrian is in advanced talks with the scuderia?

Adrian is not a TD. Different niche entirely.

[Emag]

Cardile accepted the Aston Martin offer.

Wow, must have been some offer to take him away from Ferrari. You have to consider that when working for Stroll, if you don't deliver short to mid-term, he is going to kick you out. So a risky move by Cardile, but I guess Stroll has thrown in a big enough number to persuade him.