Frederic Vasseur talks about going back and forth with its F1 updates in recent times and the competition around as things stand.
The situation at Ferrari changed from the start of the F1 season to now especially after their last update. The bouncing returned and they had to abandon some of it to help the car not bounce as much at high speed sections of the circuit.
This derailed its performance and they fell back in the order behind Red Bull, Mercedes and McLaren. With several teams facing problems with its updates, it puts forward a question if the current generation of cars are sensitive and if it has reached its threshold.
Vasseur addressed the notion and the correlation situation that Ferrari is facing. “We are convinced and it’s obvious that for one tenths or one tenth and a half you change completely the vision of the weekend, it means that we are all pushing to bring parts, and that the correlation between what we are doing at the factory and the track for the bouncing is not an easy one,” explained the Frenchman.
“It was not easy for Mercedes, it was not easy for us, it was not easy for other teams from the beginning of the season. And we are also on the edge of the development. I think that we have the same regulation by four years and we have a kind of performance and it’s more and more difficult to chase the last tenths of seconds and we are a bit more at the limit, and it’s true for everybody.
“We have to police ourselves on the fact that bouncing is key, that because that you are…it’s not just a matter of performance, but it’s mainly a matter of confidence of the drivers. It means that if you gain one tenth due to downforce then you are losing three tenths by the confidence of the drivers or the consistency of the drivers – at the end of the day the P & L is negative.
“The issue is that when bouncing is not under control and I think it’s quite impossible to simulate the bouncing because you can see that from session to session when the wind changes direction or whatever, that the bouncing can appear or disappear, that it’s really marginal. We are all really on the edge of this.
“You can’t simulate this in the wind tunnel. We have some metrics to imagine if we’ll be in a better shape or not, but at the end of the day we are also pushed by the tough performance that we could gain with a bit more downforce sometimes. And it’s a good exercise to improve all our tools, that as you said because we had to imagine how to simulate this kind of non-stable situation.
“I think we made huge step forward but everybody made a huge step forward on this. The issue is that we are developing much closer to the limit, and at the end of the day that we are always to play with this bouncing to stay close. And if you overshoot, you have to do a step back,” summed up Vasseur.
Looking at 2024 so far, the Frenchman is surprised by the lack of pace shown by Red Bull as the season has progressed and the pace shown by others. On their own, Vasseur acknowledges the dip in performance, but feels like there is recovery now.
“I think it’s true that we had the first part of the season in China where Red Bull was flying,” said Vasseur. “Then we had a good sequence for us with two or three wins. And then it was McLaren and now it’s Mercedes or Mercedes and McLaren. Overall, I think that the four teams did a similar job.
“It’s not quite often that after 12 or 13 races you can have four teams in position to win the championship. I’m not a big fan of the statistics, but we scored something like 60% more points than one year ago after 12 or something races. We reduced the gap by 300% on Red Bull and I think it’s the interesting part of the championship.
“Honestly, on Friday morning in Spa, I would have bet on Max even starting with P11 that he was flying, and then the afternoon it was for me it was obvious that it will be McLaren. At the end we did the pole and Mercedes won the race. It’s a good summary of the season and a good summary of the championship this year.
“I think the most difficult probably in this championship is not to do 1-2 when you have the best car, it’s to score good points when you are not. And it’s where we failed also as a team in the UK, Spain, Canada. This part of the season we struggled a little bit more. And sometimes we overreacted as a team and we lost too many points at this stage. But I think we are getting back,” summed up Vasseur.
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