Ferrari went from the top step of the podium in Monaco to a nightmare weekend in Canada. The Italian team left Canada empty-handed as the SF-24 struggled to generate temperatures.
“We had a problem with Charles’ engine where we lost 1.2 seconds per lap. Carlos, on the other hand, got caught up in the group with damage to the front wing and a significant loss of load. Overall, it was a difficult weekend for us,” underlined team boss Fred Vasseur.
As revealed on team radio, Charles Leclerc was suffering from a major engine issue. An initial loss of half a second then became (on average) a loss of between 8 tenths and 1.2 seconds per lap. Vasseur and Leclerc both confirmed this loss post-race.
The debacle in Canada confirms what formu1a.uno already highlighted after Imola – the Imola upgrades did not directly tackle Ferrari’s poor tyre warm-up.
Technical director Cardile has decided to accelerate development in Maranello: A new floor and other small updates will arrive in Barcelona
After approving the first block of updates for Imola, Enrico Cardile’s engineers immediately focused on the second evolutionary step
The plans at Maranello were to introduce the second major package at Silverstone, with the aim of increasing the overall load and improving the SF-24’s overall aerodynamic balance.
Formu1a.uno has learned from qualified sources that Ferrari is accelerating production times to introduce the most important parts of these upgrades to Barcelona.
As we have underlined previously, the initial plan was to wait before introducing the next developments. However, the factory in Maranello is now working hard to bring the upgrades to the next round in Spain. Ths Barcelona circuit is a very good reference for teams, as a circuit with many characteristics.
Of course, bringing the upgrades to Spain would allow them to be incorporated before the Austria Sprint.
Bringing the new floor to Spain will be a race against time
Imola was the first big step to bring the “real” Ferrari 2024 to the track. Fred Vasseur’s team spent most of the winter undoing last year’s mistakes from the “conceptually wrong” 2023 car.
Around 25% of the team’s development budget was allocated to the Imola upgrades. Trying to bring the next major update package to Spain will be a race against time.
From the data collected so far, the floor upgrade should extract further downforce. This will be worth approximately 10 load points – and much more in terms of efficiency.
Ultimately, the deciding factor in the arrival of these updates will be floor production. Three new floor units would be enough for both drivers to have the update – plus a spare. Next week will be the crucial one in this sense.
It usually takes 7-8 weeks to produce the floor model approved. Of course, in this case (having started work a few weeks ago), the aim is to finish this work sooner.
The bottom of the Ferrari SF-24 2.0 introduced at Imola – Illustration by Rosario Giuliana
