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Despite positive results after bringing a slew of new upgrades to Monza, Carlos Sainz admitted that Ferrari are ‘not sure’ of the actual progress.
Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc took the chequered flag first in an impressive and somewhat surprising home win for the prancing horses.
The team came into the weekend with a display of new upgrades. This included a new floor aimed at fixing the ‘bouncing’ or porpoising that Ferrari had suffered from in recent rounds.
The expectations
McLaren had a dominant show the weekend before at Zandvoort. They won by 20+ seconds, and there were concerns that Monza would be more of the same. Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes had been unable to contend with the pace of Lando Norris in the MCL38. This left teams scrambling for answers on how there was such a significant gap between teams.
However, coming into the Monza race weekend, the advantage McLaren had displayed in Zandvoort shrunk. Each session was nail-bitingly close, with pole position up for grabs between eight drivers.
On Saturday, Ferrari found themselves in the middle of the top four teams. Starting the race in fourth and fifth. Although a good start enabled the drivers to move up a few places a brave tyre strategy led to Leclerc winning the race. Completing 38 laps on hard tyres.
The Ferrari’s ability to stay within the DRS of the McLarens along with the impressive levels of tyre degradation led to many fans and media talking hopefully about the next few rounds. Baku and Singapore are both tracks that on paper should be strong weekends for Ferrari, and with the result of the upgrades in Monza, many are now expecting more wins from the prancing horses.
However, drivers and team personnel have been quick to try to limit expectations. Team Principal Fred Vasseur was one of the first people to speak about it. He told Autosport:
“It’s quite difficult to understand the impact of the upgrade on a track like Monza, because we are in such a different configuration compared to the rest of the season,”
Vasseur focused his hesitation on the high-speed bouncing the SF24 has recently suffered from. Although Monza is the fastest track on the Formula One calendar, it is highly specialised, with teams bringing specific set-ups and rear wings for the weekend. So despite the porpoising being better at Monza, the team must wait for tracks with longer and faster high-downforce corners to see if the problem is resolved.
Leclerc and Sainz are cautious
Both Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz have voiced caution over the expectations fans are putting on Ferrari. Leclerc reminded fans that after their last win in Monaco, Ferrari faced their worst run of races in years. Even though Canada, on paper, should’ve been strong for the team. He also told the press, “The upgrade definitely brought us closer to McLaren, but I don’t think it’s enough to be the car to beat for the rest of the season on other tracks,”
“Singapore maybe could be a strong track for us. On the other tracks, I still feel like we are a step behind McLaren and Red Bull. But we’ve seen that we can be very on a par with McLaren if we do everything perfectly.”
Sainz echoed a similar sentiment, saying he was ‘honestly not sure’ about the current performance. “We will need to wait for more normal tracks to see if this upgrade has really turned our season around and we’re going to fight for wins from now on or we are going to go back to what we saw in Zandvoort,”
He also went on to say, “I’m honestly not sure. We need more samples on this new floor and we need to go to more normal tracks. I guess the next normal one is Austin because the ones coming up are very particular, Baku and Singapore. Austin will tell us how good we are with this new floor.”
Whether the upgrades have completely fixed the bouncing or not, the Maranello-based team are positive that they are now at least heading in the right direction. Putting themselves back in the fight for wins.
Feature Image Credit: Scuderia Ferrari photo gallery