Scuderia Ferrari started the 2024 Formula One season with high hopes. They came out of Maranello and went on to score consecutive podiums and a win for both the drivers, in Australia and Monaco.
The Italian team had slowly been building over their momentum from the end of 2023 Formula One season, when Charles Leclerc went onto start the last five Grand Prixs from the front row of the grid. Ferrari finished P3 in the Constructor’s Championship for the 2023 season.
Halfway through the 2024 campaign, they seem to be struggling with their in-season development once again.
Scuderia Ferrari has been struggling to score big points ever since the win in the streets of Monaco, with Carlos Sainz’s podium at the Red Bull Ring the only real highlight.
Charles Leclerc has not scored a point in three out of the four last races.
During the Canadian GP, Leclerc’s race was marred by a string of engine issues.
On lap 1 in Austria — following a mistake in qualifying that left him P6 on the grid — he got squeezed in between Perez and Piastri. He had to pit as a result of the sustained damage to his front wing, putting him entirely out of contention.
Coming to Silverstone, Leclerc tried the “aggressive” strategy, as he pit on to the inter tyres as Ferrari’s pit wall anticipated and told Leclerc about “heavy rain.” Only the rain came about eight laps too late, and by that point he had to pit again.
Fred Vasseur explained after the chequered flag fell at the British GP that they have to sacrifice Friday practice sessions, in order to understand where and how the upgrades they brought to Barcelona have gone wrong.
“To say, okay, let’s forget about FP1, FP2, be focused on midterm and trust me that this decision as a team.
“We assumed the decision before the weekend and I think it was the right call to do it,” said the Frenchman.
Leclerc, on the other hand, has been trying “extreme” set-ups to make up the deficit for SF–24.
“I think our rate of improvement until Monaco was really good,” Leclerc said on Hungary media day.
Despite the recent setbacks that have affected the Monégasque’s momentum the most, Leclerc was keen to remind everyone of the progress Ferrari made over the second half of the 2023 championship.
“As I’ve said many times before that, we were probably the team that made most progress back from Monza maybe last year to Monaco this year was a really good rate of improvement,” Leclerc stated.
However, he did not shy away from listing the issues that have undoubtedly cost the team easy points that were on the table, as well as explaining how the bouncing has hurt them since Barcelona.
“Then we went to Montreal where we had some issues with the power unit in the race which obviously cost us a good result, and then after I think the turning point was from Barcelona onwards where we obviously had an upgrade that introduced quite a bit more bouncing.
“And on my side especially from that moment onwards, I’ve been quite extreme in the change of set-up in order to try and find a way around those issues, which you pay the price with the results.”
Leclerc remains hopeful that the struggles over recent race weekends will help them for the rest of the season, starting in Budapest.
“However, you gain a lot of knowledge about those issues and I think will help us bounce back from this weekend onwards.
“So I mean for us it’s obviously very important to lose as little races as possible to understand those issues, but I think we now we understood better those issues, and I’m confident that it will be better from this race onward in order to maximize the points here, in Spa as well and obviously for the rest of the season,” Leclerc added.
When asked which specification of car Ferrari will have on track tomorrow, Leclerc did not give a concrete answer.
“I’m not going to go too much into detail for now, you’ll see tomorrow obviously.
“We’ve been doing our homework pretty well and as I said by going in extreme ways in the last few races on my side with the set-up I think we’ve learned many things.
“And with the week off in between the races we could take conclusions and make our choice for this weekend.”
The Scuderia Ferrari driver is relatively optimistic heading into the weekend. As Hungary features low and medium speed corners in the main, propoising should be less of an issue for the Scuderia.
“I think it’s not the track where the bouncing is the most visible, however we’ve got metrics,” Leclerc added.
“Again with the last three, four races, we’ve got things that could tell us whether we are on the right path or not. So I think it will be enough to see that.”
Leclerc added that the real test of SF–24 will be seen when we reach the hills of Belgium.
“However, in Spa, it will be even more of a test for us.
“But I’m very confident that what we’ve learned in the last three, four races will be better for going in the future, whether we’re here or on another track. We will do a step from now on.”
Regarding floors, Leclerc says the new part should avoid seeing them swap floors depending on track characteristics. They reverted back to the Imola-spec one at Silverstone due to the bouncing from the Barcelona-spec floor.
He also denied the SF-24 has become peaky like its predecessor.
“No, I don’t imagine that for now. It’s definitely not one of our targets to have different floors on different kind of tracks.
“However, the new part is mostly for the bouncing. It’s not for the peakiness, the peakiness has never been a problem.
“Obviously you have more peakiness when you’re on bouncing because it’s just jumping everywhere.
“But the problem is not the peakiness, it’s just the bouncing.“
With Mercedes, Red Bull and McLaren holding a clear pace advantage over Ferrari through the last few rounds, Leclerc is hopeful Ferrari can fight at the front if they rediscover their pre-Canada pace.
“I think it’s very difficult to answer because from one weekend to the other the top two, three teams it’s always a matter of a tenth or two maximums. So to be precise in where exactly we are going to be is very difficult.
“But yeah, we’ll target the highest possible and if we optimise everything there’s no reason why we wouldn’t come back to a level of performance we’ve seen at the beginning of the year.
“So that is the target. But I think the main important point is just to have a clean weekend, not going to extremes with the set-up just in order for me to understand and know what the car is going to be like when I’m taking a corner and qualifying and if we have that then we will be capable to challenge back in the front.”
