Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz discuss the return of porpoising to the SF-24 following recent updates, as the team aim to iron out their problems in free practice ahead of this weekend’s British Grand Prix.
With Ferrari reportedly losing time to a recurring porpoising issue since the introduction of their latest upgrade in Barcelona, the team have set their sights on this weekend’s free practice sessions to iron out the teething problems.
Speaking ahead of the British Grand Prix, Charles Leclerc admits the wet British weather may throw a spanner in the works, delaying the team’s plans. When asked by the media about the team’s run plan for practice, Leclerc explains the tests which were planned may have to be pushed back if the weather interferes.
“There are no upgrades on the car [this weekend],” Leclerc said. “However, it’s obviously going to be very useful if it’s not raining and at the moment it looks like it’s probably going to rain. So if it rains tomorrow then maybe the test that we wanted to do between both cars again, just to confirm a few things, will have to be postponed to the next race.
“However, we are, as I said, still trying to work out on where we need to set up the car in order to maximise the potential of those upgrades because as I’ve said many times, the numbers that we were expecting from this upgrade is there. So the upgrade is working the way it should be but it’s more about where you run the car to optimise those numbers that we see. For now we haven’t quite managed to do that, so we are still working on that.”
Delving into the issues the team are facing currently, the Monegasque driver explained that finding the ideal setup window is the key to unlocking the performance which the upgrade brought.
“I think [porpoising] is always a topic, not specifically with this upgrade,” Leclerc explained. “It always depends on where you want to run the car. Obviously when we try to push on one side or the other, then we find ourselves with different limitations and that’s what we have been struggling to find the exact place of that new package.
“That’s where we are focusing on trying to put ourselves more centred to where the configuration of the car has to be. But I feel like we’ve learned a lot in the last race. We have run both of the cars in very different configurations and with very different setups and that, I hope, will help us to learn and to address those issues starting from this weekend.
“I think it’s very much in the optimization of the package so it’s something that can be solved short term and we already have few ideas in the direction we want to push as we’ve seen some big differences between the cars in the last race.”
Teammate Carlos Sainz had an overall less positive outlook on the team’s recent upgrade, telling the media that the team’s main priority was analysing whether or not the upgrade was a step forward. The Spaniard countered his own point however, noting that the development race this season is incredibly competitive with all teams progressing quickly.
“For sure this new package still has potential to be optimised but in the short term, for sure, we want to understand whether we’ve done a step in the right direction or not. That will also help future development. This is now number one priority for the team.
“We accept and we realise that since Barcelona we have been less competitive than before Barcelona, and this obviously raises, a bit, our concerns to the package. We need to for sure try to understand as much as possible everything involved with it and we want to do this exercise in the future.
“At the same time the others are not standing still and they are progressing exponentially so we’re trying to keep up with that.”
Sainz also noted, when asked, that the recent struggles with porpoising at high speed, is not the only issue which has been introduced with the latest upgrade package. The Ferrari man did not elaborate on what other problems have cropped up, instead saying that porpoising is“the main problem”, before moving on to other questions.
