#世界车中国造#
【The Race Column】
For Ferrari, the Austrian Grand Prix was a good race weekend – with new upgrades and the best finish of the 2023 season, the discussion of "Ferrari has begun to turn things around" has become increasingly hot.
The question is whether Ferrari is really on the road to revival after two impressive races against Toro Rosso.
Considering that Charles Leclerc's second place in the Red Bull ring is only Ferrari's second podium for the 20223 season (not counting the sprint race) and is narrowly behind pole position winner Max Verstappen by just 0.048 seconds in qualifying, this is certainly an achievement to be encouraged.
In qualifying on Friday, the race for pole position didn't really score until the last two corners, which is significant for Ferrari as it is the only pole position Ferrari has won so far in the 2023 season compared to the streets of Baku, and the Red Bull Ring in Austria is a relatively traditional track.
However, sometimes the results on paper can still be misleading: Fernando Alonso and his Aston Martin car have seen a slight decline in performance, and Aston Martin seems to have exposed its weaknesses in the Red Bull ring compared to his second place in Montreal.
Alonso said Ferrari showed more about the team's execution than the pace of the race itself. Asked by The Race if he was surprised by the speed gap between the team and Ferrari, the two-time world champion responded: "I'm not sure. ”
"Ferrari were very fast in Bahrain and they were on the podium until Leclerc got a breakdown. In Jeddah, Ferrari took the first place in qualifying but was penalized for dropping 10 places, and since then they have had more or less accidents or problems in the third practice or qualifying session. And in Miami, Charles raised a red flag when he went to the wall in Q3. ”
'They've been running fast all season, but this is the first time they've had everything working well on a race weekend, and we're only 0.1 to 0.2 seconds slower than them, so I'm not too worried.'
So has Ferrari's renaissance really come since Austria? As it comes, as it comes. As Carlos Sainz pointed out after finishing third in the sprint, the team still has a long way to go, but at least overall, the team is heading towards the right path rather than continuing to be in trouble.
"I do believe we're on the right path," Carlos Sainz said, "and I hope this is really the beginning of our good direction, but it's still too early to actually get there." You also saw Max (Verstappen's) speed, but I would like to believe that this is the beginning of the shift. ”
Sainz's comments seem to encapsulate Ferrari's current reality and they are making progress, but there is still much more Prancing Horse needs to do if it is to re-emerge as the "biggest threat" Red Bull faces inside the paddock. The Red Bull Ring's results are both a testament to the team's progress and further expose weaknesses that need to be improved.
If Ferrari were indeed on the right path, they had already turned to that path when they pulled out their upgrade package in Barcelona, with the focus of these upgrade changes being on the bottom panel and hood/sidebox sections.
Ferrari didn't bring anything new in Montreal, but in Austria they brought a whole new front wing and floor. As teams worked to accelerate the introduction of the new kits, the upgrades were brought one or two races ahead of schedule.
The intense and frantic calendar setup in sprint mode meant that Ferrari had little time to assess their upgrade, with only a 60-minute free practice session to take advantage of before qualifying tuning.
Jock Clear, Scuderia Ferrari's senior engineer, said: "Due to the special format of the sprint race, we didn't have any time to draw any conclusions on Friday, so we were basically in 'pull down when it fit'. And judging by the data, everything is indeed moving in the right direction. ”
"It's another gradual step that may be similar to the previous one, but it's not just designed to bring more downforce while reducing more drag, it's designed to make the car feel gentler and more predictable."
"It's hard for us to get this result from a wind tunnel. We strongly believe that the wind tunnel data is reliable, and from a performance point of view, it does bring some performance gains. And we went back to being frustrated by not being able to get pole position. ”
Clear's idea of "making the car gentler" is important because two of the team's drivers, Leclerc and Sainz, have complained about the capriciousness and unpredictability of the car over the course of the season. Back in the 2023 season of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, Sainz complained that the SF-23 would be particularly severely affected when driving in dirty air.
Former F1 technical director Gary Anderson pointed out two areas that stood out in Ferrari's upgrade, namely attempts to make the car's aerodynamics more powerful – changing the two vortex generators on the outer floor fence to one, and making the leading edge splitter on the inner floor more sleek.
These two dramatic changes underpin Clear's claim that Ferrari is not just about increasing downforce, but is also trying to improve the car's characteristics, meaning the car can seek further improvements in tuning.
The knowledge and knowledge of the upgraded car was not only possible by Ferrari's 100km roadshow in Fiorano before the Austrian Grand Prix, but also by a two-day Pirelli tyre test in Barcelona after the Spanish Grand Prix.
It is worth noting that despite claims that Ferrari "abused" this tyre test, they complied with the same regulations that all teams face in tyre testing, which means Ferrari is moving forward according to Pirelli's plan. It was really a positive two days for Ferrari, as Clear said, "A really good track that can tell you what your car is doing. ”
This helps speed up the process of understanding the car's setup, which in turn helps the team perform well in Canada and Austria.
"We had two upgrades and a slightly different setting of the car because they had a slightly different optimal tuning." "I'm not going to say that we went in a different direction conceptually, we just followed the requirements of the upgrade," Clear said. ”
"From a car setup point of view, we gradually deepened our understanding of the car and what it needed to achieve. So some of these improvements, in any case, come from better understanding. These upgrades are for certain areas, such as some corners with speed, we will adjust the ride height, but the overall settings are front suspension, rear suspension, damping. We're also just getting some better understanding of how the car operates.
"Maybe we may not be in a good position, and that has to do with our upgrade package. When you have a car that is too sensitive and demanding for aerodynamics, the setup becomes very difficult to master, and you may end up rushing from one extreme to the other. And when you build a race car that's not so extreme, your understanding of it becomes more comprehensive. ”
Despite growing awareness of the car and finishing second in Austria, Leclerc still believes that the car is currently "far from perfect", but the Monaco is still happy about the improvement in the car's performance.
"Overall we have a more consistent car at the moment, and I'm happy to see that," he said after the race, "On the sprint weekend things became more unpredictable, we had less time to prepare, and maybe in terms of car set-up, I was a little out of the best window this weekend.
"I struggled with the regression of the rear wheel, but in the second and last stint it got a little better when I adjusted my driving approach. But maybe we can squeeze out more performance. ”
Compared to Red Bull, it is difficult to give a clearer interpretation of Ferrari's tyre degradation because they have different race strategies. But it seems reasonable to conclude that Ferrari is much better off in Austria than in Spain. While the Prancing Horse still suffers more in competition than Red Bull, in Austria the impact has become a little milder.
How much of the difference with Barcelona is due to the special conditions of the track is currently unknown, and this weekend's Silverstone may also be a good opportunity to test. Silverstone is also the ideal track to evaluate Ferrari's performance in the high-speed corners, as the main gap between Verstappen and Leclerc in qualifying in Austria comes from the 9th and 10th high-speed corners.
"Silverstone is a very different track and it's going to be interesting what kind of results we're going to get there, because I think the weakness of the car right now may still be in the high-speed corners," Leclerc said, "and Silverstone has a lot of high-speed corners, so we'll see if the new approach to the car will work." ”
Undoubtedly, the performance of the car on the track on any race weekend depends on a combination of factors. Alonso's belief that Ferrari had a better race weekend in Austria is well documented, but they were not invulnerable either – Sainz suffered a loss of time in a two-car pit stop under a virtual safety car and was subject to complicated weather conditions to endure a tough sprint race with teammate Leclerc.
The situation at Ferrari this season can be summed up in one sentence: when the lap speed of the car is excellent, Ferrari often cannot be so strong over long distances. They had the same situation at the Red Bull Ring, even here Ferrari's tyre wear was not so bad.
Sainz may be on the point, the team is starting to shift, but if they are to truly challenge Red Bull, they will need to work hard for at least the next few months, if not years.
At its best, the Austria race marked the beginning of continuous improvement in Ferrari's performance and consistency, but it was clear that the Prancing Horse had a lot of work to do if it was to compete with Mercedes and Aston Martin.
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