Ferrari Flying Blind With Latest Floor Upgrade In Monza - 'Difficult To Understand'

Saajan Jogia | Sep 7, 2024

Charles Leclerc wins the Italian Grand Prix. / Ferrari

Ferrari acknowledged that it remains unable to fully assess the impact of the new floor on the SF-24, as the Italian Grand Prix lacked the high-speed, high-downforce corners needed for a proper evaluation. With upcoming races in Baku and Singapore also missing these key track characteristics, Ferrari will likely fly blind without clear data until the race in Austin.

During the Spanish Grand Prix, a floor upgrade caused the drivers to endure bouncing problems while executing high-speed corners, leading to a significant drop in the car's pace. Despite Ferrari introducing temporary fixes, the car's performance suffered.

To cancel the negative effects of its 'downgrade', the round at Monza saw the SF-24 receive a new floor, which contributed to Charles Leclerc's second Grand Prix victory of the season. He managed to outperform both McLaren drivers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, despite a Papaya front-row lockout.

Ferrari and its passionate Tifosi found reasons to celebrate at the end of the race weekend. The floor upgrade seemed to have worked in the team's favor, but as per team principal Fred Vasseur, the new floor's impact on performance cannot be fully assessed based on the Italian GP results alone. He told Motorsport.com:

"It’s quite difficult to understand the impact of the upgrade on a track like Monza, because we are in such a different configuration compared to the rest of the season.

"But at the end of the day, when you see the qualifying and you have six cars in less than one-tenth [two-tenths actually], every single bit makes the difference."

The true potential of Ferrari's new floor can only be judged on tracks that feature long and high-speed, high-downforce corners, such as the Circuit of the Americas in Austin. Thus, Ferrari will race in the upcoming Azerbaijan GP and Singapore GP without knowing the new floor's real effects, making the scenario more uncertain. Highlighting the challenge, Carlos Sainz added:

"We will need to wait for more normal tracks to see if this upgrade has really turned our season around and we're going to fight for wins from now on or we are going to go back to what we saw in Zandvoort.

"I'm honestly not sure. We need more samples on this new floor and we need to go to more normal tracks. I guess the next normal one is Austin because the ones coming up are very particular, Baku and Singapore. Austin will tell us how good we are with this new floor.

"In Baku there's not one single high-speed corner or medium-speed corner, it's all low-speed, very particular like Singapore. So I think we are not going to see how much we've improved the car in high-speed to medium-speed corners."

Leclerc concluded that the new floor was an improvement but not enough to challenge McLaren and Red Bull. He said:

"The upgrade definitely brought us closer to McLaren, but I don't think it's enough to be the car to beat for the rest of the season on other tracks.

"Singapore maybe could be a strong track for us. On the other tracks, I still feel like we are a step behind McLaren and Red Bull. But we've seen that we can be very on a par with McLaren if we do everything perfect.

"We've done some steps forward. I think we need some others."