2026 Scuderia Ferrari HP F1 Team

[SoulPancake13]

The customers not having access to the software mappings of the work team is a bit silly IMO. That is effectively a way to get around the new regulation.

Either way, Ferrari needs to do a big deep dive on this software and make sure it is working for China. My guess is they lost ~2-3 tenths in qualy because of it. Additionally, LEC and many others drained their battery on the formation lap. I believe this to likely be a GPS data issue causing some shenanigans.

[Frank73]

If you look at what Stella said, they feel a bit "left in the dark" by HPP on the power unit, in a way that they couldn't simulate it properly before actually running on track, and they only found out the real potential in qualifying.

A bit like 2014 in a way.

Makes sense, but such a huge difference... I mean, latest spec PU cannot be that different from the one they could work on for three yesting session.

It's around 50% battery power so it could be extremely significant. And how the rest of the PU interacts. McLaren already have shown what they can do with equality, albeit at the end of a rule set. Can't remember the last time a customer won a championship with a Ferrari engine.

But these are among reasons why I am puzzled McLaren was almost 1 s slower (in the same conditions):
1) they have shown strong knowledgeability in the last few years, so a big car disadvantage is very unlikely, even though McL have shone only with Venturi tubes cars
2) it is not that extra 50% battery is not available to them; they were not using it the best possible way, sure, but if a driver sees that battery is full on the indicator, he will fire the electrical engine at the exit of a corner, he will never be going to miss completely the energy bonus.
So I would still expect a few tenths of difference. Of course I am not so into technicalities to rule out that all the difference can be down to deployment strategy, but I can't help suspecting that something more fishy coupd be going on under the surface.

[SoulPancake13]

Makes sense, but such a huge difference... I mean, latest spec PU cannot be that different from the one they could work on for three yesting session.

It's around 50% battery power so it could be extremely significant. And how the rest of the PU interacts. McLaren already have shown what they can do with equality, albeit at the end of a rule set. Can't remember the last time a customer won a championship with a Ferrari engine.

But these are among reasons why I am puzzled McLaren was almost 1 s slower (in the same conditions):
1) they have shown strong knowledgeability in the last few years, so a big car disadvantage is very unlikely, even though McL have shone only with Venturi tubes cars
2) it is not that extra 50% battery is not available to them; they were not using it the best possible way, sure, but if a driver sees that battery is full on the indicator, he will fire the electrical engine at the exit of a corner, he will never be going to miss completely the energy bonus.
So I would still expect a few tenths of difference. Of course I am not so into technicalities to rule out that all the difference can be down to deployment strategy, but I can't help suspecting that something more fishy coupd be going on under the surface.

McLaren is also overweight and likely more draggy - that costs you a lot of lap time in this era. They are just simply quite behind on the chassis side AND also do not have the ideal deployment strategy yet.

[upsidedowntoast]

I think this year will look far more competitive than people were fearing after qualy. Max crashed and Ferrari messed up the software. Had both been performing at peak like Merc was the gap would have been 0.2-0.3s not 0.8s.

At more energy dense circuits that gap will shrink. At circuits with limited overtakes like Monaco or Singapore, Ferrari can use their start advantage to jump the Mercs and maintain position. RB currently has an undercooked chassis so we don't know how good their engine really is but expect Max to be in the mix after they shed that excess weight. Mclaren are still figuring out the deployment and their chassis is also undercooked/overweight so I think they'll be battling for wins as they go through in-season development.

I think the time gaps are more exaggerated this year precisely because of how energy starved the cars are. In the past a small aero optimization that might have gained you 0.1s could multiply to 0.2-0.3s now. For all we know Mclaren being 1s behind could be completely overcome in the next software update.

[SoulPancake13]

I think this year will look far more competitive than people were fearing after qualy. Max crashed and Ferrari messed up the software. Had both been performing at peak like Merc was the gap would have been 0.2-0.3s not 0.8s.

At more energy dense circuits that gap will shrink. At circuits with limited overtakes like Monaco or Singapore, Ferrari can use their start advantage to jump the Mercs and maintain position. RB currently has an undercooked chassis so we don't know how good their engine really is but expect Max to be in the mix after they shed that excess weight. Mclaren are still figuring out the deployment and their chassis is also undercooked/overweight so I think they'll be battling for wins as they go through in-season development.

I have a strange optimism. The technical team absolutely delivered with the chassis and aero, but the engine is lacking. We have seen how in 2018 they bounced back and delivered a title contender. Hopefully, the chance to fix the engine comes earlier in the season, and they can continue to upgrade the car to add more DF.

I would wager the gap to be ~5 tenths, but the software mapping is no joke. It may just be the case that Mercedes is going to have a larger gap in qualy than the race.

[Frank73]

By "mapping" I meant the whole process, driven by electronics and their software, how the car gains electric charge during a lap and discharge it.
Just as others before mentioned: now this is 50%!
So even the tiniest things you change, the result can be overall 1-5% of extra power (made up number), and the Merc advantage is well within this region!
Even though I am not under the illusion that Merc truly gives all the opportunity to customer teams to use their engine just like them, despite the rules... I still believe that refining power regen and deployment can be 90% of the Merc advantage at the moment.
So Ferrari might gain there a lot too.
I think this championship is very much open, Ferrari can win it if they work well.

This kind of arguments does not convince me completely. How a car gains electrical energy during a lap is clearly shown by an indicator on the dashboard. If a driver sees a lot green lights, he knows he has an energy bonus to gain a lot of traction out of a corner. So what remains is to decide the best way to deploy it, but this is at least in part car-sensitive, so it can't be but up to each and every team.

[leblanc]

There are lots of questions about Mercedes PU software vs their customers but what about Ferrari and Haas mappings?

What I just wrote also applies to Haas.

Not everything that you read in the regulations works the way it is literally written. These are "soft" regulations which are only enforced if the customer teams complain to the FIA. If you'll recall, Mercedes had a different PU spec in testing to the customer teams. The customers accepted this even though the regulations do not permit it.

As another example, in 2019, Haas and Alfa Romeo did not have the "special" PU that Ferrari was using. It has always been a grey area. In 2021, Mercedes developed a different PU for Hamilton that was not available to the customer teams.

Conjecture based upon hearsay.

[sucof]

By "mapping" I meant the whole process, driven by electronics and their software, how the car gains electric charge during a lap and discharge it.
Just as others before mentioned: now this is 50%!
So even the tiniest things you change, the result can be overall 1-5% of extra power (made up number), and the Merc advantage is well within this region!
Even though I am not under the illusion that Merc truly gives all the opportunity to customer teams to use their engine just like them, despite the rules... I still believe that refining power regen and deployment can be 90% of the Merc advantage at the moment.
So Ferrari might gain there a lot too.
I think this championship is very much open, Ferrari can win it if they work well.

This kind of arguments does not convince me completely. How a car gains electrical energy during a lap is clearly shown by an indicator on the dashboard. If a driver sees a lot green lights, he knows he has an energy bonus to gain a lot of traction out of a corner. So what remains is to decide the best way to deploy it, but this is at least in part car-sensitive, so it can't be but up to each and every team.

??? there are many very complicated softwares and data in the car doing all sorts of things what you can not see!
And there is where Merc regains and deploys more energy than Mclaren for example.
It is not just a few lights on the dashboard...
These softwares do things and change things within a hundreds of a second, all the time, - based on sensors, - where the car is on the track, - which mode the driver sets - etc etc makes huge difference.

What people might miss is that the difference overall is 1-2-3%! People always assume that 0.8 per lap is a huge difference, while it is about 1% faster than the next car! Meaning, you do not have to do magic to be that faster.
And in such a new technological regulation, this is easily made by a well developed clever software. No trickery, no nothing.

[nico5]

I find it kinda puzzling that people are willing to believe a 0.6s advantage on straightline speed over one flying lap can be due to deployment and harvesting strategy, as if the competition (we're talking performance and software engineers from a team that kicked Merc's butt over the last 2 seasons, not ICE designers) were a bunch of morons.

0.6s is ~20kW extra, on average. Starting from an equally full battery. Over 50s of full throttle in Australia, that would equate 1MJ extra energy. It's ludicrous, particularly when harvesting is capped to a lower limit in quali.

To say McLaren have more clipping in quali means absolutely nothing in and of itself. How can one confidently say they aren't running 15kW electric less on acceleration which they get back from their special ICE maps, just to be able to say "our advantage is in deployment. See, peak power is the same"?

[nico5]

Telemetry feed was so poor this weekend, but this is 4 laps of Leclerc on 20L-old mediums vs. Russell on basically fresh hards.

Faster in all high speed corners on ~20 laps older tires.
Gained 1s only over 32 laps on Russell, despite 13-laps fresher tires.

The "magic" of the Mercedes "deployment" lol

[bluechris]

Telemetry feed was so poor this weekend, but this is 4 laps of Leclerc on 20L-old mediums vs. Russell on basically fresh hards.

Faster in all high speed corners on ~20 laps older tires.
Gained 1s only over 32 laps on Russell, despite 13-laps fresher tires.

The "magic" of the Mercedes "deployment" lol

https://i.imgur.com/H543MGJ.png

There is no point for this comparison since Russell was cruising following Ferrari delta.

[PlatinumZealot]

The Mercedes advantage appears to be primarily MGU-K related. It seems to reduce parasitic losses from harvesting through LiCo and super clipping much better than the others. (And deployment maps seem better)

Both of these advantages have little to nothing to do with the turbo. Ferrari has also historically run a smaller turbo in the previous regulation set, which didn’t seem to impact them very negatively. I can’t see why it would be any different now, especially when the lag reducing effect of a smaller turbo is even more advantageous than it used to be.

ADUO should help a lot.

Thanks for the explanation.
The "macarena" wing should also help quite a bit in tracks where Ferrari could struggle with energy, by providing 5-7 km/h more at high speed.

Admittedly the benefit of a more powerful ICE is multiplied when super clipping, since the engines are essentially cut down to ~180 kW when doing it (assuming perfectly efficient super clipping). A 10 kW (~15 horsepower) advantage will thus mean roughly a 10% advantage in retained ICE power while super clipping, even if 10 kW usually only works out to about a 2% advantage over the rest of the lap. This means that they sustain speed better while super clipping.

So the relatively minor ICE power advantage of the Mercedes is definitely amplified by the use of super clipping, but the majority of their advantage should still lay in the MGU-K. ADUO should also help the teams catch up a bit on the ICE side, even if they don’t copy the Mercedes compression trick.

Contradicting your self a bit there.

The MGUK has years ago reached limiting returns. It's likely already 98% efficient.


You already gavw the correct answer. The advantage is their ICE and their deployment /recharge techniques.

[catent]

For those speculating about the explanation for Mercedes' advantage, can anyone offer good evidence/data for their claims?

We have someone saying the MGU-K is the most likely variable involved, while someone else is adamant this is entirely ICE and recharge/deployment-related.

It's mentioned that the MGU-K was optimized years ago and hit the point of diminishing returns; is that still the case during this new formula, with different PUs, and no more MGU-H?

[rifrafs2kees]

Interesting telemetry analysis.

[Artur Craft]

Goodness, despite being on 14 older tires, Andrea Antonelli increased his gap over Leclerc. Mercedes is head and shoulders ahead with their "suspicious" engine.