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.”
