Mattia Binotto states that the new Ferrari floor worked as expected in F1 Japanese GP, but they need to review the tyre degradation situation.
Ferrari introduced a new floor during the F1 Japanese GP weekend at Suzuka, which performed well as per team chief Binotto. They couldn’t collect enough data on Friday, but managed some dry running on Saturday to learn and match with wind tunnel data.
It is still early days for them but it all counts towards the 2023 season which their focus is right now having lost the drivers’ title and are likely to lose the constructors’ too. While the floor seemingly worked, Ferrari still is ailing from high degradation than Red Bull.
It was same for Charles Leclerc in Japan as he eventually came under pressure from Sergio Perez to make a mistake and lose second. It is something that is already under review, but more data from the Suzuka weekend will further help them understand as per Binotto.
“Let me start with the floor, yes it worked as expected,” said Binotto. “We tested it on Friday, but it was fully wet, but on Saturday morning we had data on the dry conditions, and the floor was performing as we were hoping for. On tyre degradation, we saw it already on the Friday.
“I think that by pushing too much on the very first lap, we simply destroyed the front tyres, in a way that it was not possible to recover. So we need together with Charles and the engineers to review, maybe he was attacking a bit too much to try and close the gap, maybe destroyed and as a consequence, he had not any more the right pace for the following laps.
“On the single lap, I think the pace and the speed was there. But in terms of tyre management, certainly we could have done something different,” summed up Binotto, who will have challenge on his hand next year with the patience bell on his head.
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