Heading into the weekend, a race win at the Italian Grand Prix didn’t appear to be on the cards for Ferrari. However, the pit wall and the driver came together to overcome the rapid McLarens, as Charles Leclerc took the chequered flag at Monza for the second time in his F1 career.
With the upgrades they introduced at Monza, the Italian marque hoped to gain performance by combating the bouncing they were previously experiencing in high-speed corners. While they seem to have taken a step forward in qualifying, it’s difficult to draw conclusions regarding the effectiveness of the package and Ferrari’s overall competitiveness since Monza is a low-downforce outlier.
In his post-race media session, team principal Fred Vasseur mirrored this sentiment. When asked if the floor upgrade was instrumental in their victory and whether they had successfully eliminated the side effect of the Barcelona package, he admitted that it was tough to gauge the precise impact of the upgrade, given the unique nature of the Monza circuit. While he attributed their one-lap pace improvement to the new upgrades, the Frenchman clarified that their consistent race pace on Sunday was primarily the outcome of excellent tyre management.
“Honestly it’s quite difficult to understand the impact of the upgrade on a track like Monza because we are in a so different configuration compared to the rest of the season that it’s quite difficult to understand.
“But at the end of the day when you see the quali and you have six cars or seven cars in less than one tenth, every single bit makes the difference that for one hundredth I’m keen to go for it. At the end of the day, we had four cars in two hundredths, I think yesterday. And for sure you can say that the upgrade is crucial, but at the end, the pace today was more linked to the management, tyre management. It’s in quali where you have six, eight cars in one or two tenths that every single upgrade will play a lot.”
Vasseur was also asked to share his opinion on whether Ferrari can keep the momentum going after two strong Sundays at Zandvoort and Monza. With several street tracks and sprint weekends coming up next, the media wanted to know how they are approaching the last third of the season, sitting 39 points behind championship leader Red Bull. Stating that they are not planning to make any changes impetuously, the 56-year-old added that they are simply focusing on optimising their weekend in Baku.
At the same time, Vasseur also reflected on the competitiveness that the top four teams are displaying and how difficult it has been recently to predict the outcome of a race weekend. Given that DNFs can lead to massive momentum swings, he remarked that he expects both championship battles to go down to the wire in Abu Dhabi.
“My thought is that first I have to enjoy tonight and to enjoy the party and then we’ll be focused on Baku. But I think it would be a huge mistake to try to draw any conclusion or to change the plan. And so as you said, it’s a very long way until Abu Dhabi and that we have something like 415 points on the table, I don’t know.
“It’s so tight, the fight, honestly. I spent a couple of years on the pit wall but it’s the first time that I think in F1 we have this situation where eight drivers can win the race without an accident or a big crash, that four teams are able to win or to be on the podium, and it’s changing from session to session… I think until the end of the season it will be like this and it will be a huge fight.
“And it’s true that with eight cars, with this kind of competitiveness, one team can do 1-2 and the other one 7-8. I don’t want to speak about DNF and this can make a huge difference in terms of points. Let’s be focused on Baku first and step by step we’ll see.”
Regarding the questions of what they are antipating in Baku and Singapore and whether they can get the better of McLaren, Vasseur reiterated that he won’t make any proclamations straight away. While he had estimated that Ferrari would struggle at the Dutch Grand Prix, they managed to defy expectations on Sunday despite a poor qualifying session. As such, he was reluctant to predict how they would fare in the next two races. Nonetheless, since their overall performance improved at Monza in comparison to Zandvoort, Vasseur believes that the street circuits of Baku and Marina Bay could suit the SF-24 better.
“No, I will think about Baku tomorrow morning, I have to enjoy tonight. But in Zandvoort, I was convinced that Zandvoort was a difficult one for us on the paper for different reasons and I was convinced that the next three events would be probably a bit better. That Monza was better but clearly in Zandvoort we were nine tenths off in quali, yesterday we were one tenth, and I think Baku and Singapore could fit also the car and that’s it.”
