With the arrival of new aerodynamic regulations this season, the teams had to start from a blank page for the design of their new F1. And some, if not all, are still struggling to understand why their single-seater works on some circuits and not on others.
Mercedes F1 is probably the best example of this: the W13 was on pole position in the Hungarian Grand Prix thanks to George Russell, but then fell short a few weeks later at Spa on a very different track.
And even Ferrari, which produced a successful F1-75 on all circuits, also received its share of surprises. Jock Clear, the engineer in charge of performance within the Scuderia, explains why his team has sometimes been taken back by a poor performance or, conversely, by an excellent one.
« If we had the answer to all these questions, then we would have found the miracle solution. It is very difficult to solve these problems. »
« We see some teams find performance in a race when others tend to regress, and it’s a real mystery to untangle all that. That’s why we don’t have an easy job, and why it’s so intriguing for us and for you, the media. »
« Honestly, we still don’t understand exactly what happened at Spa. We have ideas that we obviously leaned on. Then we came to Monza, which is similar to Spa in terms of downforce well quite different for the rest, and we had the feeling of understanding what had happened to us in Belgium. »
« We may discover other things later in the year, we are constantly learning. No team knows all the details, we play in a sport where everything is relative to what others do and sometimes, in some areas, it’s almost a guessing game. »
« I think it’s because these regulations are brand new. There will always be a learning curve with the development of a car that meets new rules, and that’s the case for everyone. «
« At the start of the year, a lot of people were asking us, ‘Why is your car so almost so early in the year?’ Again, it’s a relative sport. Maybe we had come to understand better than others who were still trying to figure out where their car was. »
« That’s what makes new regulations so interesting. There’s of course the pure performance of the car but also understanding it, and the drivers themselves have to understand how to drive it. »
« With quality drivers such as Max Verstappen, Charles Leclerc or Carlos Sainz, you expect it to work from the start. But they are human. They work on their talent every day and they have progressed during year. Maybe they understand better now. »
