2025 Scuderia Ferrari F1 Team

[f1316]

Spa is a usual and long and we often see big gaps to pole here - I think Max has had 5-8 tenths each of the last three years. If you have everything hooked up, the gains compound.

The gap to Norris is small and not huge to Max, who’s an expert here. The gap to Oscar is crazy but, given this is the first time they’ve run the suspension and with only one FP session, I’m sure there’s more to find. 4th place is a reasonable start for Charles - for Lewis, while it may be the first time he’s had a spin from rear locking, it’s hardly the first time we’ve seen a Q1 exit from him in the last few years…

[Xyz22]

I think we should consider ourselves lucky Merc crapped the bed today. Have a feeling we might have even gone backwards with the car.

The car is just slow compared to McLaren. That’s it.
Nothing can save it.

[atanatizante]

That sound Davidson is talking about, we could hear it each time the drivers engaged first gear in order to get off the track. You should notice this while watching the driver's videocam above the roll hoop ... what is this sound and where does it come from?

[atanatizante]

I wonder if an engine braking issue caught Lewis out!

Davidson said on SKY about a strange noise before he spun out ... we could hear this weird sound each time the drivers engaged the first gear in order to get off the track, had you been watching the driver's videocam above the roll hoop ... what is this sound and where does it come from?

[atanatizante]

Spa is a usual and long and we often see big gaps to pole here - I think Max has had 5-8 tenths each of the last three years. If you have everything hooked up, the gains compound.

... given this is the first time they’ve run the suspension and with only one FP session, I’m sure there’s more to find …

Right! HAM said in the official press conference before the event that they need at least 3 races to crunch the data before they could extract all the potential out of the new package (new suspension in conjunction with the new floor) ... so at the Monza race we could see the final optimised car setup of these upgrades ...

[venkyhere]

about what happened to Hamilton's car :
is there a way to get the telemetry for the abandoned lap ? I wonder whether there is a throttle-brake overlap into the bus-stop chicane entry ; and whether this overlap exposed some bad/wrong diff setting leading to rears locking up and the grinding clunk from the gearbox.

[Luscion]

this is just Ant's opinion but figured i'd post it anyways, but also lewis didnt take blame as far as im aware, he said they dont know what caused the spin and will have to look at the data

'It's surprising that [Lewis Hamilton has] taken the blame for that. No matter what [Lewis] says, the car spun him round.'

Natalie Pinkham: It seemed in that interview that [Lewis Hamilton] was taking the blame for it. You felt otherwise?

Anthony Davidson: When I first heard it, I was convinced yeah, yes there's rear locking, he confirmed that there's rear locking and that causes the backlash in the gearbox as you're desperately trying to downshift while the rear tyres are locked and it gets unhappy with that getting out of sequence and that's what ultimately spun him round but he reckons that he's taking the blame for the rear locking happening and the driver obviously is in control of the brake bias within the car as well, it is bumpy into that corner.

The F1 car is less so affected by those bumps because it's got such massive downforce at those speeds, at close to 200 miles an hour the car has actually got its maximum downforce there with no DRS into the final chicane so once you're on the brake pedal obviously you get a pitch into the car and the rear pops up slightly and that unloads the rear so you lose a little bit of mechanical grip through the rear anyway and that's why you get the weight transfer to the front and that's when the rear becomes vulnerable under braking.

Combine it with the downshifts, you're asking more torque going through the gearbox under each downshift request and that's what can trigger a bit of extra rear locking. You see it on motorbikes all the time for example, so that's what he's suffered with there and spun him round but it's surprising that he's taken the blame for that.

Maybe if he listens back to it again and by the time he gets back to the data and works it through with the engineers he might think differently but at the moment he's a bit downtrodden and beat himself up for it.

Yeah I mean they'll clearly see that there was rear locking and it's quite hard for a driver to cause that unless you've been a bit careless and thrown your brake bias too far rearwards. There's very little that the driver can do in these digital cars that they drive. They're not very analogue these days. There's only so much you can do on a flappy paddle gearbox for example to make the thing try to lock up so lots of systems that they're like computers on wheels these things today. No matter what he says the car spun him round to a certain degree.

[deadhead]

Apparently Fred said live on Canal+ that Lewis made a mistake, he was too aggressive on the brakes.

True?

[dans79]

I wonder if an engine braking issue caught Lewis out!

Davidson said on SKY about a strange noise before he spun out ... we could hear this weird sound each time the drivers engaged the first gear in order to get off the track, had you been watching the driver's videocam above the roll hoop ... what is this sound and where does it come from?

I was on a conference call so I was just watching on mute.

[Fakepivot]

Apparently Fred said live on Canal+ that Lewis made a mistake, he was too aggressive on the brakes.

True?

well i was watching Charles onboard, I never seen Charles struggle at that part, it could Lewis being very aggressive made it difficult for himself.

[Seanspeed]

Right! HAM said in the official press conference before the event that they need at least 3 races to crunch the data before they could extract all the potential out of the new package (new suspension in conjunction with the new floor) ... so at the Monza race we could see the final optimised car setup of these upgrades ...

This isn't how top teams work.

Top teams dont bring upgrades and then have to question for a month whether their upgrades actually brought benefits or not. Top teams bring upgrades that immediately impact the car's performance/characteristics in a positive and expected way.

That's the whole problem. We're simply not operating on that level. The late upgrades in 2024 gave us all a bit of hope that Ferrari were actually getting to that level, but this was misguided hope, as always. I still dont blame Ferrari for trying to push things this year and not just go with some basic evolution, as that wouldn't have been good enough either. It's just that this team is fundamentally not a championship-caliber team at the technical level. It just isn't. Good, but not enough.

[ScuderiaLeo]

It could be both? Hamilton being aggressive on the brakes triggered something in the car that made it unstable.. meaning it's both his mistake and a car problem. But ultimately I would consider that more of a car problem, making a car that can't handle heavy braking for two drivers that are very picky about how they brake is a recipe for disaster.

Vasseur said they're confident this is a set up problem, let's see if that's true or not during tomorrow's qualifying.

[f1316]

One other thing I noticed in both FP and SQ was that Ferrari was much closer to the pace on the medium than the soft. Piastri’s advantage could be amplified by that car’s ability to keep the tyres alive (with Norris presumably messing something up in that regard eg prep lap). Charles set a purple sector 3 in SQ2 - implying good tyre life at the end of the lap - but that was lacking in SQ3.

[MB_Racer]

I think we should consider ourselves lucky Merc crapped the bed today. Have a feeling we might have even gone backwards with the car.

According to FP you might have a good point!

It will be very interesting to see what happens in Qualy if it’s dry..

On one hand Charles does very well with this difficult car but 0.7 gap to McLaren

[deadhead]

Shame about the wet race on Sunday but at least we get to see a bit of long run tomorrow and hopefully a dry q3