“WE’RE DONE” Charles Leclerc sadly show Five concerning signs as Ferrari risk being demoted from the F1 2024 Championship podium
The second-fastest team in the opening rounds of F1 2024, Ferrari were heralded as the team to take the fight to Red Bull in the championships.
Today they’re facing the very real prospect of being demoted from the season’s podium.
Damning ‘not fast enough’ verdict
Front row starting positions and podiums were littered throughout Ferrari’s first eight races with China the only outlier, but still resulting in a P4 and P5 result.
But already in Miami, it looked as if a third team had entered the chat with Lando Norris bagging his first F1 win in the upgraded McLaren. That prompted a response from Ferrari who updated the SF-24 at Imola before winning the next race in Monaco.
Charles Leclerc’s victory at his home race not only erased all talk of a curse for the Monegasque local but it put Ferrari within a race victory from Red Bull in the points.
Six races later, and with between two and three months of development time lost when their Spanish GP parts failed to fire, Ferrari have not only fallen behind McLaren on the track – but also Mercedes.
“Compared to Mercedes, Red Bull, and McLaren, we are two or three-tenths behind,” Carlos Sainz said at Spa. “I felt competitive and fast, then when I heard the others’ times, I thought: ‘No, I’m not as fast as I would have liked’.”
Neither was Leclerc, who declared: “We were not fast enough. It seemed we were the fourth car, we expected McLaren and Red Bull, but Mercedes are faster than expected.
“Unfortunately, we are the fourth force. The top three keep changing, but we are there, at best on par with Mercedes.”
Porpoising has put Ferrari on the back foot
Worrying for Ferrari is the cause of their lack of pace – porpoising. The phenomenon returned with a vengeance at the Barcelona circuit when they introduced a new floor along with other upgrades.
But even rolling back on that in Austria, the bouncing was there.
Forced to decide per race which floor, the Spanish one, which improves the car’s speed but also intensifies the bouncing or the Imola one, which is not as quick but has less bouncing, Sainz says they cannot quantify how much the bouncing is costing them in lap time as it has a knock-on effect: the team has to make set-up changes to minimise it.
Team boss Fred Vasseur noted another effect it was having and that was on the drivers’ confidence with the car. Even if Ferrari bring other new parts that are worth lap time, if the bouncing is there the driver’s confidence takes a hit and a one-tenth step forward is negated by “three-tenths” back, leaving them in a “negative” performance balance.
The bouncing cannot be simulated in the wind tunnel as it occurs in high-speed corners, meaning it’s extremely difficult to get a handle on without basically taking away downforce.
Just ask Mercedes. The Brackley squad grappled with bouncing for most of the first two seasons of F1’s ground-effect aerodynamic cars. It required a massive change in direction to minimise the issue and regain lost downforce but even today the drivers report “bouncing” at some tracks.
