Ferrari pulled the covers off from its 2019 contender. The prancing horse did so in its annual event at its homebase in Maranello in an event where symbolism was key.
A place to discuss the characteristics of the cars in Formula One, both current as well as historical. Laptimes, driver worshipping and team chatter do not belong here.
So...did Ferrari screw up front wing design? Both Mercs and RB were quicker and they have same FW?
Well, Merc has a low rake philosophy and RB has high rake. So, different philosophies at work with similar approach to FW and it can't be given that their FW approach is the right one. It's difficult to say Ferrari's FW is not working, purely based on one race performance. Having spent tons of hours on their CFD and WInd tunnel, they would certainly understand the fundamental philosophy of their overall design. It would be wise to wait for the team to come back and talk about their observations.
Past two cars were also relatively understeery compared to Merc cars and this one isn't any different. It's not that, suddenly they have lost front down force. Tyre behavior might have contributed to their woes in more significant ways. These tyres can either make a hero or zero of car and you just have to look at the ups and downs that Mercedes cars have seen in the past two years.
can someone with knowledge can confirm or deny that this small green led is a system that tells the driver when to lift and coast (Ferrari)
Quite possible. It's definitely new this year, the led was there last year but I haven't seen it light up back then. Right next to it is a sticker with 'RF' on it. It wasn't activated during Qualifying.
can someone with knowledge can confirm or deny that this small green led is a system that tells the driver when to lift and coast (Ferrari)
This light turns on for a second when DRS is activated/deactivated.
I don't think he's using DRS all the time during the race
You're right, of course.
Then I've misinterpreted it in onboard-videos in testing. This light turned on for a second at the beginning of the straight and then at the end too. Maybe I need to have a look again.
During the race we noticed a very cautious use of the Ferrari power unit, as if to confirm the post qualifying rumors, which spoke of a weakened engine to avoid technical problems in the race . Techniques that Ferrari had accused in the second week of testing in Barcelona.
Taking advantage of the work of Alex Brunetti (which you can find on his Twitter account), who followed the race from the pilots' onboard camera and heard all of Sebastian Vettel's radio teams, you may notice a quite unusual use of the Ferrari power unit.
The first strangeness concerns the narrow use of the mapping carried out in the first phase of the race. In fact, Vettel's Rossa goes off with the engine 1 mapping (which should be the most thrust), and after a few laps it passes to a much calmer engine map, engine 5. A very different choice than last season, when it went down gradually from mapping 1 to mapping 3-4. Yet at that stage Vettel had to stay close to the Mercedes duo so as not to let them escape.
The most extreme mapping (engine 1) is authorized only before the German pit stop, which took place during the fifteenth lap, in the race phase in which Ferrari was trying to fill the gap with Lewis Hamilton. This mapping is no longer used even during the defense on Verstappen, during lap number 31. In that phase of the race Vettel's SF-90 was set to a very bland engine mapping, engine 5, when normally, so as not to lose the position, you opt for the mapping engine 1, taking into consideration also the fact that the Dutch had mounted only a few laps the new medium rubber, compared to the yellow rubber already used by about fifteen laps by the German. This explains how Verstappen managed to "strip" the Ferrari into the straight that leads into turn three with a Honda power unit,
The quirks continue even in the middle phase of the race, when Vettel begins to "pull" the gears too much, especially on turn 13 and 14, to try to have higher engine revs, presumably to push the MGU-H to the maximum , as if there was a need to recharge so much, taking advantage of an extreme SOC (state of charge) mapping. A few laps later another Vettel radio team arrives in which he talks about "lag" in his power unit, thus a delay in power delivery, perhaps due to a non-perfect functioning of the turbo part?
Feelings relating to a problematic power unit are again recognized by Vettel, who at about twenty laps from the end asks Riccardo Adami if he is all right on his car and asks why he is going very slow, who dribbles the question saying that everything is ok. At the end of the race in Ferrari they decide to freeze the positions, not allowing Leclerc to overtake a Vettel in obvious difficulty.
Interesting tidbit from Vettel, I do remember last years car being weakest against Merc in fast corners.
"It's different this year than last year," says Vettel. "Last year we came out with problems from the winter tests, this year the opposite was the case, last year we had a very bad rear end, so we had to tune the car to understeer, this year the problem was quite different - but so far we have no answer. "
Another interesting thing is, Ferrari lost 4 tenths in 3 corners against Hamilton, and in S3 (twitchiest and slowest), only 0.1s of 0.7s that was the deficit.
On the minisector video, it was visible that the time-loss was mostly occurring under breaking.
"That was one story; the other was the under-performance of Ferrari. Around a low grip, bumpy track very different to Barcelona, the SF90 simply wasn’t working. “It was not balanced, it struggled with the tyres and none of the different set-ups we tried worked,” surmised Mattia Binotto. It was noticeable that it was running a lot of front wing angle and GPS analysis confirmed that most of the time loss was in Turns One, Three and 13 – i.e. the slow, big steering-lock corners leading onto straights. Meaning it was slow onto the straights and at the end of them. Even with all its front wing angle used up, it still had a front-end grip shortfall."
". . . the Ferrari was lacking in front-end grip. Although its straightline speeds were well down too, this was a just a function of how much slower it was onto the straights (GPS-derived power overlays suggested a negligible difference between Mercedes and Ferrari)."
No mention of PU problems here. Only lack of front-end grip, which then severely compromised performance on the straights from compromised corner exit.
