Tag Archives: formula-1

Leclerc admits that he has to improve on low-grip tracks

Charles Leclerc says that qualifying on low-grip Formula 1 venues like Mexico City and Monza is “not one of my strengths” after he had to settle for fourth on the grid for Sunday’s race.

The Ferrari driver was P4 in all three qualifying sessions, while his team mate Carlos Sainz secured pole position. A mistake in Q3 spoiled any chance of improving his position.

Leclerc says he has issues over one lap at Monza, where cars are in low drag spec, and Mexico, where the high altitude saps downforce.

“Disappointed, but not surprised,” he said of P4. “I was struggling and not feeling well since FP2 with the car.

“In Q3 the lap was coming very, very nicely until Turn 10, where I lost the car. But I had to take those risks, just because I didn’t have the pace. I think P4 is not that bad. But of course, disappointed.”

Asked what he was missing he said: “Just grip, and the feeling. Sometimes you like the balance, today I don’t. Yesterday, I didn’t either.

“I think it’s probably not one of my strengths, the qualifying in very low grip tracks. I tend to push quite a lot in qualifying, and in Monza and here, I always struggle quite a lot with that.”

Leclerc suggested that he has to rein himself in at such venues, and not push too hard.

“I’ve got to think a lot more in order to finish a lap,” he said. “And try to contain a bit more my will to push extremely hard in those qualifyings, because it just doesn’t work out on those tracks.

“And, yeah, today I tried to do that. It was working pretty fine. In Q3 however, I lost the car in Turn 10, and from that moment onwards, it was very difficult to finish a lap.”

“You slide a lot, just because there’s very, very low grip. You’ve just got to be a little bit less on the limit on those tracks, and I struggle a bit more to do that.

“However, for the race pace, it doesn’t seem to be an issue. It wasn’t an issue in Monza. I don’t think it would b e an issue tomorrow. So on that, I’m a lot less worried, but in quali, it’s a bit tricky.”

Leclerc won the US GP from fourth on the grid, but while he is optimistic about Sunday’s race, he acknowledges that it won’t be as straightforward as last weekend.

“McLaren has gained a lot of pace compared to yesterday,” he said. “Max [Verstappen] obviously didn’t run a lot yesterday, so it’s difficult to compare with Max. Actually, we don’t know about Max’s race pace.

“We are quite confident that our car could have a good pace tomorrow. However, I think it’s a different scenario compared to Austin, where there it’s very easy to overtake.

“Here in Mexico, there’s a lot of overheating for the engines, for everything, and whenever you are P4, then you’ve got to manage all these things, and it makes it a lot more difficult to come back.

“But we’ll try our best, and if we do a good start like last week, then everything is possible.”

Clear joined the Ferrari party in Austin

Ferrari senior performance engineer Jock Clear says that the Italian team’s focus on race pace has paid off that it is a “a really good place to be.”

In Austin Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc qualified third and fourth, but they had superior race pace relative to McLaren and Red Bull and logged a one-two, with Leclerc ahead.

Clear said that the switch away from chasing one-lap performance has been successful.

“We’ve mentioned before that this year we had changed our focus a little bit,” said Clear. “It was clear for people to see that certainly two or three years ago, we were the kings of qualifying, and really struggled on a Sunday.

“But even last year the balance was not quite right. And I think this year, the encouraging thing is that wherever the drivers qualify, they sort of get out of get out of the car at the end of qualifying and think, yeah I know that I can race tomorrow, which for the drivers, is a really strong mentality.

“In previous years, you know that Charles has got out of the car in P1 in qualifying, and thought, ‘Now I’ve got to try and hang on to this in the race.’ And when he’s got to face 56 laps of hanging on to a position, it’s a different prospect.

“Now, we go into the race knowing, okay, we qualify P2, P3, we know we can race. We know we can win this from here. And that’s a really, really good place to be so. Psychologically and technically, it’s the right way to approach racing, for sure.”

Clear stressed that the drivers themselves have played a role in ensuring that they look after their tyres on Sundays.

“I think we’ve seen all year, and obviously we statistically look at the season as a whole, and our tyre usage and degradation is much better this year than it was last year,” he said.

“And that’s been pretty much everywhere. And again you can’t forget that a lot of the specifics of getting the tyre to do exactly what you want are down to the driver.

“And Carlos and Charles are now very good at it, and we’ve worked with them, and they’ve worked themselves very well over the last 18 months to really get on top of what was probably very much a perceived weakness two years ago, and that knowledge they have now. So they’re going to apply that everywhere.

“And I think that’s as much a factor of the tyre deg as the car itself. So they’re doing a good job, basically.”

Ferrari lost to rivals in qualifying in Austin thanks to the sequence of fast corners at the start of the lap. However Clear had downplayed the perceived weakness in that area.

“Well, the fast corners aren’t a problem, per se,” he said. “Every circuit is a compromise. We could go much faster around the fast corners if we wanted to, but we would then be compromising the slow speed.

“We made comments in Austin about we’re still losing a bit to the other cars in the high-speed, but we’re gaining huge amounts in the low-speed. And I think the compromise we took in Austin speaks for itself, if you see what I mean.”

Clear suggested that the race team is doing a good job of optimising the car: “I think that’s the encouraging thing about the way an F1 team works away, particularly at the trackside, and applies the performance that the factories delivered for you.

“You’ve got to make those choices. Where do we want to be fast? What are the most important aspects of this circuit? And we got it absolutely right in Austin, there’s some times we don’t get it absolutely right.

“But I don’t think it’s fair to say this car is weak in high-speed. I think if we had a circuit that had seven high speed corners and no low-speed corners, we would set it up, and I think we’d still be in the hunt.

“You’d have to say that Red Bull are probably still the benchmark in high-speed corners, but they’re clearly losing out quite a lot now in the low-speed. So as a compromise and as a complete package, I think we’re comfortable where we are at the moment.”

Clear made an interesting observation on how knowledge gained at the Austrian GP paid off in Austin.

“I think we got it wrong in Austria, which is a very similar circuit to Austin, funnily enough,” he said. “Not absolutely true, but there’s aspects of Austin that worked for us that were a result of what we didn’t get working in Austria.

“Obviously, we brought upgrades in Singapore, we brought upgrades in Italy that were generic. And I think Austin was a proof of that package. But more than that, what we did correctly in Austin was corrected the errors we made in Austria in terms of setup.”

The McLaren Formula 1 team says it disagrees with the decision of the US GP stewards to reject its request for a right of review into the five-second penalty handed to Lando Norris in Austin.

The request was a last roll of the dice by the Woking team to try to reverse the decision that saw Norris cede third place to Verstappen, creating a six-point swing in the World Championship battle.

The stewards determined that the request did not meet the established right of review test of supplying evidence that was significant, relevant, new and unavailable to McLaren at the time of the decision, as noted in Article 14 of the International Sporting Code.

A virtual hearing was held on Friday afternoon Mexican time, with team boss Andrea Stella and racing director Randeep Singh appearing for McLaren, and sporting director Jonathan Wheatley and senior race strategy engineer Stephen Knowles representing Red Bull.

In essence McLaren’s case hinged on the claim that Norris was ahead and that in fact it was Verstappen doing the overtaking, contrary to what was noted in the original decision made by the US GP stewards.

As explained by the FIA, Singh suggested in the hearing that the new evidence was that “the document for the decision contained a statement that was incorrect and that evidenced an objective, measurable and provable error had been made by the stewards”.

The FIA said that Singh added that “the statement was that ‘Car 4 was overtaking Car 1 on the outside but was not level with Car 1 at the apex’ […] was in error because McLaren had evidence that Car 4 had already overtaken and was ahead of Car 1 ‘at the braking zone’,” and that “this error is significant and relevant and is new and was unavailable to McLaren at the time of the decision.”

The FIA noted that Stella said that the case for McLaren was a “legally sophisticated explanation” and “urged the stewards to recognise that this was a ‘substantive case’ especially compared to previous right of review cases.”

In rejecting the request the stewards say they focussed on relevance, concluding that the claim that there was an error in their original decision could not be new evidence.

They noted that “in relation to relevance, McLaren appears to submit that the stewards’ finding that ‘Car 4 was not level with Car 1 at the apex’ was an error and that Car 4 had overtaken Car 1 before the apex (and therefore that Car 1 was the overtaking car) and that this asserted error is itself, a new element.

“This is unsustainable. A petition for review is made in order to correct an error (of fact or law) in a decision. Any new element must demonstrate that error. The error that must be shown to exist, cannot itself be the element referred to.”

In the wake of the decision McLaren issue a statement making its position clear.

The team said: “We disagree with the interpretation that an FIA document, which makes a competitor aware of an objective, measurable and provable error in the decision made by the stewards, cannot be an admissible ‘element’ which meets all four criteria set by the ISC, as specified in Article 14.3.

“We would like to thank the FIA and the stewards for having considered this case in a timely manner. 

“We will continue to work closely with the FIA to further understand how teams can constructively challenge decisions that lead to an incorrect classification of the race.”

Piastri will still have the older wing this weekend

Oscar Piastri will still be without the latest McLaren MCL38 front wing spec in Mexico City this weekend, although the Australian has downplayed any loss of performance relative to his team mate.

The wing was part of a package introduced in Austin, although only Lando Norris raced with it.

More updates are set be introduced in the coming races, with the team trying to ensure that they are fuller proven before they are signed off.

Asked by this writer if he had the new wing this weekend Piastri said: “Not at the moment, I don’t think. But either way, it’s a very, very small performance increase. So if I don’t have it, or if I do, it’s certainly not what’s going to make or break my weekend.

“The only thing I’m missing from last week is the front wing. Again, all of the changes we made were very, very small and minor things. So not having one of them is certainly not the end of the world.”

Team boss Andrea Stella believes that Mexico City will be more favourable to McLaren than Austin, and Piastri agrees.

“Hopefully,” he said. “We’ll see. I mean, it’s quite different in a lot of ways to Austin. Obviously, the kind of altitude and stuff like that makes it quite a different challenge, but hopefully it helps, it suits us a little bit more.

“I don’t think we necessarily expected Austin to be – painful is a bit of an exaggeration – but not as competitive as we hoped. But it wasn’t a complete surprise.”

Piastri says that the team has a better understanding as to why the MCL38 lost form in Austin.

“I think we’ve got some good ideas about why qualifying was so tricky,” he said. “Looking back at the weekend, I think the race itself was actually quite positive, especially from 12 months ago. Especially the first stint, I was going with Lando.

“The second stint a few mistakes in the middle of that hard stint, but for 95% of the race, we were a very even match. And I think even just as a team, our pace was actually quite strong. It was just that we were very slow at the start of the race, and then everyone built the gaps, and then that was kind of it for us.

“So I think it looked a little bit worse than it was. It’s just that, with the competition being so tight, if you put a step wrong, then you go from being first and second to where we were in fourth and fifth. So yeah, it’s just a very tight field.”

Sainz thinks that Qatar could be a difficult venue for Ferrari

Carlos Sainz believes that Ferrari’s winning form in Austin indicates that the SF-24 will be competitive at all the remaining venues of this season – with the possible exception of Qatar.

After a run of venues that were expected to favour the car the team’s potential at a more “normal” track like Austin was unclear ahead of the weekend.

However having qualified third and fourth the cars showed superior race pace to McLaren and Red Bull, allowing Charles Leclerc to head Sainz home in an impressive one-two finish.

The car lost out in the fast sweeps early in the lap, but made the time back in the slower stuff later on.

“I think when you look into the detail of the Austin track as long as we survived the first sector, which in qualifying, we were two-tenths of the Red Bull and the McLaren only in three or four corners, then all of the other corners were perfect for Ferrari,” said Sainz.

“And we managed to make the time back in all the low-speed stuff. We’re still lacking in high-speed corners, especially in qualifying mode, which makes me feel like Qatar will be still a difficult race for us, but all the other circuits just hopefully be on the mix.

“Then whether you win or not, it depends how’s your race pace that weekend? How is the start? How do you qualify? But at least be in the mix, which means you give yourself a chance at winning at almost every track. Except for maybe Qatar, that I think is not a Ferrari track at all.”

Sainz is optimistic about the team’s chances for the remainder of the season: “I’m hopeful. I’m more hopeful after Austin that we can keep up with this.

“At the same time, qualifying remains a bit of on Achilles heel this year, because the moment you qualify P3/P4, in a track like Mexico maybe here with a long straight you can pass in into Turn 1 at the start, but in a lot of the other tracks, you will not be able to do the kind of race that we did in Austin.”

Sainz believes that the team is in the fight for victory in Mexico this weekend.

“I hope that we can be in the mix like we were in Austin,” he said. “I think if we are in the mix, given our race pace this year and what can happen here at the start, even if you’re not on pole, you might have a chance at winning.

“Before Austin, I doubted whether we could be in the mix in tracks like Austin. The fact that we dominated there, and we were so strong, gives me hope that we can be in the mix, and as long as we are in the mix, anyone can win.”

Sainz also made an interesting revelation about the fuel issue he reported on the radio during the US GP.

“I cannot go in a lot of detail,” he said. “What I can tell you is that it obviously made me lose performance for a couple of laps, and with that, the possibility to overtake Max when I was in his DRS.

“And then it also meant that I obviously had to compensate towards the end of the race by having to save a lot of fuel. But happily, nothing happened. I actually think we were quite lucky with the fact that I could finish the race.

“But yeah, let’s say it obviously compromised quite a lot my my race. And a bit of a shame, because I felt like it was very quick that weekend, but also feeling lucky that I could finish the race in P2.”