Ferrari conduct ‘deep analysis’ for Hungarian GP after ‘undriveable’ claim

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

Ferrari will conduct a “deep analysis” of their upgraded floor before making the call on whether or not to revert to the old spec in Hungary.

Accelerating their development plan for the season as their position as second fastest on the grid was threatened by McLaren and then Mercedes, Ferrari put new parts, including a new floor, on the SF-24 in Spain.

Out with the new, in with the old? Ferrari’s big floor spec decision

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher and Sam Cooper

But instead of closing the gap to their rivals, Ferrari slid further back as bouncing returned to the car and it cost them pace in the high-speed sections.

Carlos Sainz is concerned the lost lap time is even more than Ferrari knows as it’s forcing them to compromise the car to minimise the bouncing.

But while he expects it will have an impact on the car at the next in Hungary, it could make it “undriveable” at the high-speed Spa-Francorhamps circuit.

“We will bounce in Turns 4 and 11 [in Hungary],” said the Spaniard, “but until something better comes we may have to live with bouncing for a while..

“In high-speed tracks, we might have to run the floor of this [older] package because if not, the other one is undrivable.

“I trust the team will make the right calls circuit-to-circuit until a more solid package, which is not bouncing in high-speed and good in low-speed, arrives and then we will start thinking about battling the top three teams again.”

To do that, team boss Fred Vasseur says they’ll conduct a “deep analysis” of the two floors available before making the call of which one to run in Hungary and a week later in Spa.

“We will have to have a deep analysis of the weekend and consider the fact that Silverstone is by far the most aggressive track in terms of bouncing, with very high-speed corners and so on,” he told the media including PlanetF1.com.

“But we will have time to discuss and decide for Budapest.”

The stark reality facing Ferrari as McLaren and Mercedes surge

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

 F1 2024: Head-to-head race statistics between team-mates

Ferrari deny fundamental issue with the SF-24

The upside for Sainz and his team-mate Charles Leclerc is that Vasseur does not believe this is a fundamental issue with the SF-24, nor a correlation one.

Instead, the team boss says it is an aero issue and that Ferrari has “tonnes of solutions”, they just need time to implement them.

“We changed all the aero parts and the bouncing appeared in Spain,” he explained.

“To fix it you have tons of solutions. You have solutions with a compromise on performance, you have solutions without compromise on performance – developing a new package. I think we are there now.

“We will have to have the next race with the current car and the sooner the better, we will bring upgrades that have less bouncing.”

“Correlation is okay, the correlation on the downforce is okay,” he added.

“It is still a question mark for everybody and sometimes the bouncing is popping up like this. It is quite difficult to have correlation because you don’t have bouncing in the wind tunnel.

“We all have metrics and you cannot anticipate you can have more bouncing with this part than another one but to know if it will have a negative impact on performance is another story.”

Outscored by all three of their main rivals since Leclerc’s Monaco Grand Prix, Ferrari is still second in the Constuctors’ Championship but McLaren are just seven points off the pace.

That Ferrari is having to use the Friday practice sessions to run tests instead of trial new upgrades also isn’t helping their cause.

“We had exactly the same situation last year, almost at the same stage of the season – Silverstone, Budapest and Spa,” Vasseur added. “We stopped it at Zandvoort, had a good scan of the situation, and had a good recovery because the weeks after, we were there.

“What is tough in this situation is you don’t have tests, proper tests, to fix it or to at least understand it. It is very difficult as a team to compromise or sacrifice Friday sessions when you know you are losing time during the weekend and say ‘ok, let’s forget about FP1, FP2 and focus on the mid-term’.”

Read next: McLaren demand ‘less authority’ for F1 teams after ‘pretty embarrassing principal meetings’