pb6797 wrote: ↑07 Jun 2019, 21:37
I wonder if the higher temperatures are playing into Ferrari’s hands?
Remember in Spain FP1 when Ferrari took a new engine and were only 1/10th behind Merc, but no where by qualifying?
When you take a new engine you need to run it at a higher engine mode in FP1 to simply run some real checks on it. If you only find out in FP3 that in higher engine modes it's going to fail then you may not get the old engine in by qualifying.
So Ferrari in Spain looked fast because they ran higher engine mode and as they all ran normally later on they were way down. Here Merc likely ran higher engine mode in FP1 with a new engine, got the data they needed and some combination of them turning the engine down a little and Ferrari turning theirs up a little.
Ferrari did make up plenty of time in the straights in Barcelona but lost bundles of time in corners and got spanked in S3 so here with massive straights and less corners it was pretty likely that Ferrari were going to be pretty decent. Merc engine update is very minor so it isn't crazy to think Canada (and maybe many power tracks) would be closer to Bahrain performance for Ferrari.