Neither Leclerc nor Carlos Sainz could keep their tires alive long enough to match their rivals’ lap times, and their pace dropped and needed extra stops, causing them to crash outside of the top ten.
But while Ferrari wasn’t alone in suffering more demotion than expected at the French GP, the Maranello team definitely felt a lot worse than the competition. And that has led the team to look for answers as to why their SF21 car, which had taken pole position in Monaco and Baku, was fighting in the lower midfield.
The main cause of Ferrari’s tire wear problem seems to revolve around the management of its front tires. The team found that the fronts of the SF21 tend to warm up quickly and operate in a very narrow temperature window.
Such a trait can be great for a qualifying lap – especially on slow tracks like Monaco and Baku, where tire warm-up is an important factor. However, on the other hand, in a long race where the tire temperatures keep rising, they can fall out and that creates problems.
It’s a trait we’ve seen all season. Ferrari proved to be quick in qualifying, but didn’t always manage to integrate this into the racing pace.
Sainz said after the Paul Ricard race: “It was a trend and I’m not going to lie. It’s something we keep a little bit in the back of our minds every race.”
“We know that we have to struggle more in the races than in qualifying. But I have to say that there were a few weekends this year when this topic didn’t come up.
“In Barcelona, for example, the race pace was not an issue. It is also clear that we have a very narrow working area window on our front tires, so we tend to struggle with scarring or front wear a lot more than our competitors.
“Now it’s about understanding why we have such a narrow window and why we have more problems with this front tire compared to our competitors.
“I’m sure the whole team will return to the factory tonight and from tomorrow we will work extremely hard to address the problem because it is obvious and obvious. You don’t have to be a genius to see us clearly have problems. “
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Several factors played a role that made the circumstances of the French GP so difficult for Ferrari.
As a circuit with faster corners, Paul Ricard puts more energy into the tires than places like Monaco and Baku, so it is more difficult to keep tire temperatures under control. In addition, Saturday night and Sunday morning rain washed away much of the rubber that had been deposited on cars earlier on the weekend.
It meant a “green” track surface for the race that had significantly less grip – which is always a trigger for above-average degradation as well as a grain when the cars slide more. Sainz experienced first hand how much less grip there was than expected when he slipped off the track on the way to the starting grid.
Ferrari’s problem with the front tires also seems to be something that simple setup changes cannot fix.
Team boss Mattia Binotto believes that the solution can only be achieved in the medium to long term with some major optimizations to the vehicle components.
“Can we do a simple development on the current car? I think we can improve the situation, but to fix it I think we have to make some hardware changes such as the rims, which is not possible. ” [due to the] Regulation, ”he said.
“I think it’s more important for us at this point to try to understand it and tackle it for the next year. I think this problem can come back in some races but not all tracks. It depends on the track and weather conditions together, but we need to “prepare for future situations like this and at least try to alleviate the problem as it will happen again.”
Charles Leclerc, Ferrari SF21
Photo by: Charles Coates / Motorsport Images
Particularly interesting is the reference to the rims, which confirms that Ferrari is simply overheating its front tires. Modern rims, which have been homologated for this year and could therefore only be changed by burning tokens, are incredibly complex.
The teams use them for both aerodynamic effect and airflow to better control tire temperatures. In Ferrari’s case, it may have gone too far to get aerodynamic benefits through heat dissipation – which means the rim, and therefore the tires, are getting hotter than the team would like.
But while Ferrari knows what went wrong in France, it now has an intense few days to find out why it was so bad and what it can do to prevent it from happening again.
Binotto added, “We have to go back, analyze the data, brainstorm and do some simulations. I think that will be part of the homework we have to do.”
But it knows that it is asking too much not to guarantee a repetition this weekend in Austria.
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