Ferrari’s ‘negative three-tenths’ data as key problem hinders performance gains

Proposing returned to the Ferrari SF-24 with the team’s Spanish GP upgrades

Fred Vasseur says getting on top of the SF-24’s bouncing issues is “key” as development gains are being erased by the drivers “losing” confidence in the car.

Although Ferrari had the second-fastest car on the grid in the early rounds of this season, they’ve scored just 93 points in the six races since Charles Leclerc’s Monaco Grand Prix win.

Fred Vasseur makes Mercedes comparison as Ferrari hampered by ‘key’ problem

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

Out-developed by McLaren and Mercedes, McLaren has overhauled Ferrari in the Constructors’ Championship as they’ve outscored them by 89 points while Mercedes are closing in.

It led to Ferrari accelerating their development schedule only for the team’s Spanish Grand Prix upgrade to trigger porpoising with the car.

However, even rolling back on some of those upgrades, most notably the floor, has not helped their cause with the SF-24 suffering high-speed bouncing that negatively impacts the car’s pace.

Such is the magnitude of the problem, one Mercedes have had to deal with, it hampers further development as Vasseur admits even if the team is able to find performance, if the bouncing it there is affects the driver’s confidence.

“We are convinced and it’s our view that one-tenth can change completely the weekend,” he told the media including PlanetF1.com.

“It means that we are all pushing to bring parts. And you know that the correlation between the what we are doing at the factory and the track for one thing is not an easy one.

“It was not easy for Mercedes, it is not easy for us, it is not easy for the teams from the beginning of the season.”

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The updated Drivers’ and Constructors’ standings after the Belgian Grand Prix

“We’re also on the edge of the development,” Vasseur continued. “We have the same regulations for three years and we have a kind of a sum total of performance. It’s more and more difficult to chase the last tenth of a second and we are a bit more on the limit.

“We have to police ourselves from the fact that bouncing is key. Because it’s not just a matter of performance, but mainly a matter of confidence of the drivers.

“If you are gaining one-tenth due to downforce and you are losing three-tenths by the confidence of the driver, or the consistency of the drivers, at the end of the day, that balance is negative.”

The Frenchman revealed Ferrari are “pushing like hell” to bring new parts to the car to resolve the bouncing issue.

“To fix the bouncing is a step in performance. For sure we are pushing like hell to bring something, we’ll do it as soon as possible,” he said.

“The issue is that when bouncing is not under control I think it’s quite impossible to simulate the bouncing also because you can see from session to session when the wind changes direction or whatever, that one thing can appear or disappear.

“We are all marginal, we are all really on the edge of this. You can’t simulate this in the wind tunnel. we have some metrics to imagine if we’d be in a better shape or not.”

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