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The Scuderia Ferrari team came to the Australian Grand Prix after an impressive showing in the winter tests. But from the first practice session, the team struggled with the tyres and balance at Albert Park.
“Right from Friday, we didn’t feel comfortable at this track,” said Binotto. “Even though we did a lot of work on set-up, we didn’t find the right balance and even our qualifying performance demonstrated that we were struggling to adapt to the Albert Park track.
McLaren, Ferrari and Red Bull had/have problems with Melbourne.... not sure if it's the rakemclaren111 wrote: ↑19 Mar 2019, 11:55The Scuderia Ferrari team came to the Australian Grand Prix after an impressive showing in the winter tests. But from the first practice session, the team struggled with the tyres and balance at Albert Park.
“Right from Friday, we didn’t feel comfortable at this track,” said Binotto. “Even though we did a lot of work on set-up, we didn’t find the right balance and even our qualifying performance demonstrated that we were struggling to adapt to the Albert Park track.
Good news that we're not the only team with work required on balance issues
Reliability definitely needs improving. But I also think maybe (I'm just speculating) they were cautious with the engine during qualifying and didn't run the full qualy mode? Carlos had indicated that they had engine issues, after the end of FP2 on Friday, I don't know if it was specifically the MGU-K being referred to or something else. Maybe with this in mind they turned it down a bit, at least I hope so. If you look at Lando's times across qualifying, you really can't see a big jump of improvement that would make you go, "Hey party mode in effect!!" The gains he made were marginal, and looked like something you could attribute to track evolution or him continually doing a better lap.mclaren111 wrote: ↑19 Mar 2019, 11:49By Renault PU problem I include Qually modes, reliability and in season development...
Sainz believes the MGU-K problem his Renault engine suffered had already been seen in pre-season testing.
"I think it's an issue we might have had in testing already, so they might know the cause and hopefully we can improve on that," he said.
"I trust Renault, they've done steps, so hopefully we can keep pushing."
Teams with not enough pace in the Chassis use the q3 mode since q1 - they don't have the luxury of the top 3 - which is what I think happened. Speed trap figures also indicate they were using full beans.Ground Effect wrote: ↑19 Mar 2019, 12:54Reliability definitely needs improving. But I also think maybe (I'm just speculating) they were cautious with the engine during qualifying and didn't run the full qualy mode? Carlos had indicated that they had engine issues, after the end of FP2 on Friday, I don't know if it was specifically the MGU-K being referred to or something else. Maybe with this in mind they turned it down a bit, at least I hope so. If you look at Lando's times across qualifying, you really can't see a big jump of improvement that would make you go, "Hey party mode in effect!!" The gains he made were marginal, and looked like something you could attribute to track evolution or him continually doing a better lap.mclaren111 wrote: ↑19 Mar 2019, 11:49By Renault PU problem I include Qually modes, reliability and in season development...
That was in my opinion a better strategy. Sainz made four places on the start and would've been in points like Stroll etc who were behind him when he retired. Gasly ran long and even with fresh c4s couldn't overtake the Toro Rosso.SmallSoldier wrote: ↑18 Mar 2019, 23:59What surprised me is that Sainz was on the Soft tires where Medium or Hard May have been a better choice to split strategies between Norris and Sainz... Those that started on the mediums showed that was the better strategyripleysend wrote:First rule of Albert Park. Run a long first stint if at all possible. Track position is king. I can only think that either:
a) the tyres were shot from quali. But then others ran a lot longer
b) they got drawn into trying to attack Haas or cover Renault, neither of which was really on as it turned out
Having decided to put early the Hard was the option as they were worried about overall life to end of race. But it seems everyone struggled on those.
Hindsight is a great thing. Look where the likes of Stroll and Hulk ended up.
Based on the last few years with the quali tyre rules as they are, s neakingqualifying 7-10 is a bit of a killing zone on a good number of circuits unless the car has very strong race pace. Need those in season upgrades to work
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What are your thoughts on the tyre selection? Conservative?
Another one stop race, with very little wiggle room for strategy. A good qualifying would really help. I agree with you on the C2, they seemed to go well on them during the long runsgodlameroso wrote: ↑19 Mar 2019, 18:40Sakhir is so much different from Albert Park. The corners are much more straight forward, less chicanes, more long radius corners, good braking, and good traction are key. Its a track where one can get very similar lap times with either a low, mid, or high DF setup.
The C2 tire worked really well, I think it'll be the preferred race tire, the C3 will be harder to manage. C1 is just too hard, although I'm sure someone will try it.
I don't believe it will be found until after 2021.Ground Effect wrote: ↑19 Mar 2019, 10:54There appears to be a convergence with the PU, at least in race trim, qualy mode is not clear enough, because we seemed to have a repeat of Melbourne last year, where Mercedes pulled out such a big gap in Q3, only for Ferrari to lock out the front row in Bahrain.mclaren111 wrote: ↑19 Mar 2019, 09:26It was the 1st race of the season and Lando's first race...
We have more than enough to be optimistic about...
I would say Renault PU is now our biggest problem...
There's a lot of time to be found in the chassis, just look at the disparity between McLaren and Red Bull last year, with the same engine. But it won't be found overnight.