At the start of the 2024 season, Ferrari established itself as the second-fastest team and the closest competitor to Red Bull. The Italian team proved it with the championship standings as well. A win for both Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc further proved the point. However, since Leclerc’s win in Monaco, Ferrari has suffered a downfall. The developmental path the team has taken has hurt them and has resulted in them falling down the pecking order. Sainz has now finally discussed what has been going wrong for them.
As quoted by F1 Maximaal, Sainz said, “It [Ferrari’s problems] is something recent. It is not like adding five or ten points of downforce will suddenly make the car faster because that could cause problems elsewhere. The regulations make it very challenging, but I think everyone has struggled with these problems at some point.”
Check out first pics of the big Ferrari upgrade for Imola!
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Competitors like McLaren and Mercedes have improved significantly, as there were times when both teams were finding it difficult to even register podium finishes in the recent ground effect era. However, now both Mercedes and McLaren seem convincingly ahead of Ferrari in terms of pace.
And Ferrari’s struggles are also reflecting recently in the championship. McLaren is now just seven points away from Ferrari to take over second place in the standings.
Moreover, even on the driver’s side of things, Leclerc has lost the runner-up spot to Lando Norris. However, Ferrari boss Frederic Vasseur is confident they will bounce back.
Vasseur confident Ferrari will bounce back
Ferrari is currently suffering from the infamous porpoising once again. Ahead of the Hungarian GP, Vasseur addressed the issue and claimed that they will eradicate this concern soon.
In fact, the Ferrari team principal has claimed that there are multiple solutions to the problem since it’s not fundamental and is just a byproduct of their upgrades. However, there will be no help for Sainz and Leclerc yet as Ferrari will run the same setup as the British GP at the Hungaroring.
As quoted by Si.com, Vasseur said, “We changed all the aero parts and the bouncing appeared in Spain. To fix it you have tons of solutions. You have solutions with a compromise on performance, you have solutions without compromise on performance – developing a new package. I think we are there now. We will have to have the next race with the current car and sooner, we will bring upgrades that have less bouncing.”
So, even though Ferrari has a solution for the bouncing, they will continue to use the same setup that they used at Silverstone for the upcoming race. The Italian team will collect all the data from the upcoming race before introducing the rectifying upgrade package.
There might be changes introduced at the Belgian GP, the last race before the summer break. After the Belgian GP, they will have plenty of time to weigh their options and come back stronger for the second half of the 2024 season.
