wowgr8 wrote: ↑03 Sep 2020, 14:27
collindsilva wrote: ↑03 Sep 2020, 12:20
Ferrari should have had a alternate plan since FIA would have found out about the illegal engine issues one day or the other, what was their backup options. they should have run a parallel development to achieve the result without having to play with the fuel flow.
Completely mad that all their resources went into those tricks. Even going as far as basing their entire car concept off it in 2019 which was so silly. If they focused on peak downforce for the 2019 car with that engine in the back they would have won that championship (with major repercussions after being found out)
To be fair, it wasn't exactly a low downforce concept. It became a relatively low downforce concept compared to Mercedes, who had designed the car a with "maximum downforce at all costs" philosophy. Mercedes were the only team that fitted thermal cameras on their car in 2018 Abu Dhabi and raced and people did not have a clue of why they were doing it. As the rules mandated that, every team has to use the car raced in Abu Dhabi for the next week's tyre testing, Mercedes scored an advantage over others.
That helped Mercedes to understand what are the demands of 2019 tyres for a simplified front wing and they realized the tyres required a lot of downforce to make them work. Then they went with downforce at all costs philosophy. That is how they were good on tyres and Ferrari and Red Bull struggled in the initial phases and wanted 2018 tyres.
Importantly, in Winter testing, Ferrari was the stand out performer and they ruled the Barcelona circuit, which is a high downforce circuit while Mercedes was working with different plans. At that point in time, nobody said, it was a low drag (meaning lower downforce) car. It all felt great and it felt like the right car with good amount of downforce, given the rule change with the front wing where everyone had lost downforce. Just that, Mercedes were smarter.
The problem with Ferrari was, they went too far with their trick and it was absurd to be around a second fast on a circuit's straights. It raised everybody's eyebrows that, how can they have made so much of progress with stable PU regulations. Some people estimated the advantage to be around 60 to 70 HP over Mercedes! That was where the trouble started. If the advantage would have looked in the range of 20 HP, I don't think they would have had any problems. Now they seems to have gone back to 2014 level in terms of competitiveness with the additional sensor regulation.
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