Jock Clear identifies conditions where Ferrari is struggling
Ferrari senior performance engineer Jock Clear says it's clear where the team is struggling to deliver, and that they must broaden the scope of their thinking on this year's car to avoid falling behind their rivals.
This year's SF-24 car delivered nine podiums and two victories in the opening eight races of the season, including a win apiece for both Carlos Sainz (in Melbourne) and Charles Leclerc (in Monaco).
But the team was badly hit by a double DNF in Montreal as Leclerc retired with engine issues, and Sainz spun out after catching a kerb on lap 53, taking Williams' Alex Albon with him.
“Montreal was tough," Clear admitted in the paddock in last weekend. "We did not go there suspecting that we would have any issues and we were really scratching our heads at times.
“We thought we were quite competitive in Friday practice. We looked quite competitive on intermediates. But when it dried up for qualifying we really didn't have any performance.
“The underlying performance was not where we thought it should be," he said, adding that the same thing had previously happened in China. "You look back at China and you start to think, okay, there is a bit of a picture here.
“We did not completely deconstruct China and understand it fully. But now you add that to Canada and you think: okay, when the track is moist or a little bit damp and cold, we're relatively worse off than others.
"Of course, it's that relatively worse off than others that makes all the difference," he acknowledged.
"In our simulations, we don't have the ability to look at a damp track," he pointed out. You can only compare yourself to others. So in Canada, I think Charles failed to get into Q3 by five-hundredths of a second or whatever.
“You get into Q3, the track has dried up a little bit more or is a little bit warmer and suddenly maybe you can qualify P4 and you think, ‘Oh, we're fine’.
“But it is those really fine margins that as soon as the track is cold, we just didn't have the performance we would normally expect to have."
Although both drivers were back in the top ten in the most recent race in Barcelona, it was a curiously subdued weekend for them both as they tried to bed in the latest package of upgrades for the SF-24.
Leclerc and Sainz finished in the same positions they had started, P5 and P6 respectively, and had a somewhat nondescript race that was disappointing when they had expected to be in the mix for pole and victory.
Overall the team is struggling to get the balance right between being too hard on the tyres and not having enough pace in single lap runs. "That is always the conundrum, everything in F1 is a compromise," Clear admitted.
"It looks like Red Bull have got a better compromise than everybody because at most races for the last two years, they have been dominant," he pointed out. "But that dominance is starting now to narrow.
"You've seen that at some circuits where they are not completely comfortable, actually they can be beaten and beaten on merit," he said. “It's not just a bit of luck, they are actually getting beaten on merit.
"Even the guys who got it absolutely right a year ago, you start to shift the balance a little bit and you start to narrow your focus or whatever their development is doing and suddenly you start to not have the ideal compromise.
“We have not got the ideal compromise so we need to open our eyes a bit and maybe broaden the scope of the car," he argued. "If we're going to cold circuits at the moment, we have to recognise that we are not as strong as we should be."
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