Seanspeed wrote: ↑10 May 2024, 22:06
bananapeel23 wrote: ↑10 May 2024, 20:47
McLaren had issues that needed to be rectified before they could start going after outright performance. A lot of the work they put into the upgrade package was probably not aimed at outright performance, but rather at addressing issues that have popped up at certain tracks, like tyre wear or a narrow setup window. Only after they solved those issues could they chase outright performance.
Ferrari doesn't have that issue. They have the most mild-tempered car of all this season. The thing is insanely kind on its tyres, appears to have a massive setup window, has worked on every track so far and appears to have no significant weaknesses. It's a great car with no weaknesses to iron out before they can start chasing performance.
That means the Ferrari upgrades are in all likelihood simply focused on increasing downforce and losing drag, which is a luxury McLaren didn't have. As such even a smaller upgrade can yield similar performance gains, as they don't have to focus on anything other than pure performance. Ferrari didn't need a revolution, they needed an evolution.
This feels a bit like rewriting history. Ferrari has struggled with several issues this year, somewhat pervasively, in fact. Low speed corner performance has not been ideal, faster corner performance/quick changes of direction have not been up to snuff of the best, and the car finds itself out of the window for quick warmup of tires too often.
Nothing catastrophic or anything, and the car has been generally been pretty good, but it's hardly a 'no weakness' car where there's no issues to address.
Well yes, no car is totally free from issues. But out of the big 3 teams, Ferrari has had by far the least variation in track-specific performance. Never has the car looked weak at a track.
I guess what I meant is that it doesn't have any obvious fundamental flaws that have shown up. The Red Bull and McLaren cars appear to be setup princesses in comparison. They have both shown pretty significant performance highs and lows. Sometimes they struggle with tyre wear, sometimes with traction, sometimes with snap oversteer or understeer. Ferrari has been constantly good, but never exceptional.
What I mean to say is that it has been a reliable workhorse at every type of track it has been at so far. Surely that must give Ferrari a lot of confidence to chase pure performance across the board, rather than widening the setup window or ironing out fundamental flaws like tyre wear, which may only benefit them at certain tracks.
Then again, we said the same things about Aston Martin last season because the car seemed to be such a reliable platform and the package seemed to be really conservative. Everyone believed that it would be an easy platform to upgrade and squeeze performance out of, which turned out to be far from the truth.
Still I believe that cars that tend to be solid and predictable everywhere are generally easier to upgrade than temperamental cars like the W13 or F1-75 (post TD39).
B spec cars used to require new chassis. Today we can settle for substantially different nature of overall bodywork and resulting flow field, like W14B. Not even RB20 Japan spec can be considered a B spec, let alone McLaren or Ferrari upgrades. 
