Although the current season is one-color Red Bull, every race weekend continues to reserve some surprise on the levels of competitiveness on the track. If normally this concerns the pursuers of the RB19 number 1, this Friday showed a Red Bull and a Verstappen in appearance more vulnerable than usualmore than half a second on the flying lap and “human” also on the race pace front.
The aerodynamics make little difference and the soft mechanics create problems for Perez and Verstappen
The impression of the first day is that the dominating team of the season met perhaps the worst Friday of the year bringing together a series of negative factors. The first is that the RB19 is on the Singapore track he can’t show off some of his best weaponssuch as aerodynamic stability in long, fast turns, or the ability to turn very low and very rigid compared to the track, without having the slightest porpoising problem. The Marina Bay track features slow but above all short curveswhere therefore the stability of the aerodynamics rewards relatively little, compared to a car perhaps more agile and responsive in braking, insertion and traction. There mechanicsa great strong point when coupled with the aerodynamics of the RB19, definitely appeared too softprobably to better absorb the roughness of the city asphalt, and the related curbs, to be attacked when changing direction. The thing It didn’t seem to work not at all, with Perez practically confirming via radio that at every braking point he had the sensation of to lose control of the car, with the rear rising too much, thus underlining too high a pitch excursion. Verstappen also complained major balancing issuesagain with the rear of his RB19, which was suffering from poor adhesion both in the corner entry phase and in the traction phase, which are fundamental on this track, made up entirely of braking, sharp corners and restarts from low speeds.
Is the new directive linked to the Red Bull difficulty?
The media buzz started immediately linking the new directive on the flexibility of the wings and bottom to the difficulties seen on the RB19, but at this stage a connection doesn’t seem likely, especially with that relating to the wings. The impact of the deformation of the airfoils is particularly relevant on those runways where the aerodynamics have a decidedly predominant aspect, with long curves combined with large lateral loads, in which a profile that deforms in a controlled manner can guarantee better efficiency. With the short corners in Singapore, however, even if there were marked differences, they should hardly be noticeable, while next weekend in Suzuka will be much more interesting from this point of view. It remains to be assessed whether the changes to TD39 relating to bottom they forced the Milton Keynes coaches to choose a higher and softer seatbut there will probably be an answer to this already in third free practice sessionwhen it will be understood if and how much the setup of the car will have changed winner of all the races held so far.
Ferrari loaded and low, effective on the flying lap and with a great chance
Filling the gap left at the top of the standings by Red Bull was the Ferrari, with a one-two in both the first and second free practices, and above all with the perception of an extremely effective car. The impression is that one has been made significant step of understanding in these conditions, although not necessarily a leap in quality beyond the track, which is proving particularly favorable to the red. The first good news for Ferrari however is that, we would finally like to say, it can be used the maximum load specification of the rear wing on the SF-23. The setting changed of the front wing it’s a mechanical setup which appears revised, allow the adoption of this specification, which guarantees a strong rear in insertion and traction, on one of the slopes that most of all requires these characteristics. Overall, however, the car appeared really well balanced, firmly in the hands of the pilots, who continued to improve on the track lap after lap. The worst features of the SF-23 that we have observed so far, in Singapore they fail to emerge, with curves too short to generate aerodynamic instability and the front under less stress than the rear. We then saw a large amount of sparks emerge from the bottom of Leclerc and Sainz’s cars during the session, which gave us the impression that the Maranello team took to the track in a decidedly aggressive in terms of ground clearance, probably the result of the work on the set-ups carried out in recent days, to understand how to improve the car in high load conditions. All this allowed the two reds to close the first day concretely applying for an important result. However, if we think that this setting will guarantee similar performance to the Ferrari on all high load tracks but we probably run into it in error: the real challenge for the SF-23 are the tracks where the front is subjected to more stress and where the curves take significantly longer, bringing out the aerodynamic gaps in the project, so well hidden in Singapore. From this point of view, tracks like Suzuka, Austin and Interlagos will be decidedly more challenging, and therefore need to be re-evaluated.
Race pace simulations are all similar
From the point of view of race pace simulations really appeared all similarwith Ferrari, Red Bull, Mercedes, Norris’ McLaren and Alonso’s Aston Martin fighting for the average on the tenth. In the end, the fastest on average was Norriswho however carried out the first part of the simulation on soft tyre, followed by a Alonso appeared in very good shape precisely in terms of race pace. The Ferraris showed on medium tyre a certain degradationbut, it must be said, not that dissimilar to the competition. Leclerc suffered more performance decay than Sainz, but after recording an attack lap 6 tenths quicker. In fact, if Red Bull were to confirm itself as “human” and therefore with values similar to what was seen in the first two free practice sessions, Ferrari would find itself in the hands of an important chancehaving appeared slightly better on the flying lap compared to direct rivals, and then anyway similar on paceon a track where overtaking is decidedly difficult, and where starting from the front therefore makes a substantial difference. There competition will be very fierce however: first of all the Red Bull it will hardly remain so far from the summit, while the McLaren in version again revolutionized seems to have closed the gap in the slow curves well. Among Verstappen’s pursuers is Mercedes had proved to be the most complete car so far And Russell showed great potential both in terms of pace and flying lap, not to forget the never tamed Fernando Alonso, who in turn seems to have a cartridge to fire this weekend. We will find out whether Red Bull will return to dominate already in qualifying, silencing its opponents and canceling any evaluation. only starting from the third free. What is certain is that the weekend in Singapore started in a decidedly more interesting way than expected.
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