Red Bull’s Chief Advisor Helmut Marko recently took a sly dig at rival team Ferrari’s star driver Charles Leclerc as he highlighted the Monegasque’s struggle for pace since he won his home race earlier this year.
Ferrari started the season as the second-fastest team but has since fallen down the pecking order. Mercedes and McLaren made bigger strides in development and became regular contenders for race wins whereas Ferrari slipped down.
Marko spoke to Formula Passion about McLaren’s strategy goof-ups and Mercedes’ recent resurgence. Then, he quipped about Ferrari’s progress. The Austrian said,
“Ferrari are also coming back – although after Monaco there is a joke that since they dived into the harbor after the victory, they have not resurfaced.”
P3! Good reward after a difficult start to the weekend. It was an eventful race and our pace wasn’t bad, so we’ll take it and keep pushing for the upcoming races. We need to focus on ourselves to try to fight at the top again. On to Silverstone!
https://t.co/DznhN5oL9K pic.twitter.com/M7ZEhWdrLr
— Carlos Sainz (@Carlossainz55) June 30, 2024
Since the Monaco GP, Ferrari has had just one podium finish to its name – P3 in Austria, thanks to Carlos Sainz, who capitalized on the crash between Max Verstappen and Lando Norris. But in terms of pure pace, they were nowhere near the front.
Their upgrade packages in the past failed to bolster their performance and made them slower instead. It is also why they reverted to their original spec in Silverstone and approached the Hungarian GP with a whole new set of upgrades.
Leclerc’s eventful Hungarian GP practice
Ferrari’s new upgrade in Hungary is a revised version of the floor they brought to Spain. What the latter did was, it increased the bouncing, and made the SF-24 stiff, which affected both drivers; Leclerc in particular.
FP1 in Hungary was brilliant for Ferrari as Carlos Sainz topped the charts and Leclerc finished P3. FP2 on the other hand, was a bag of mixed results.
While Sainz was still up there with a P3 finish, Leclerc crashed early on in the session after losing control of the car.
On closer inspection, it seemed as though the car bottomed out on the exit on the corner over the curbs. This caused Leclerc to break the rear traction and crash into the wall. This crash further brought up the question of whether the low ride height sensitivity was solved by the new floor or not.
