Decisive drivers in Q3 at Albert Park
The European dawn saw a good qualifying session taking place on the splendid Melbourne track. Max Verstappen he makes 3 starts out of 3 at the start of the season, but at Albert Park he definitely had to put in a lot of his own, and the result was much more in the balance than we are now regularly used to seeing.
There Ferrari in fact, it gave the impression of being the best car on track throughout the initial part of qualifying, with the SF24 confirming many of the excellent impressions gathered in the previous sessions. The evolution of the track, between tires and temperature variations, brought the session more into the arms of Red Bull, giving the front end that additional level of grip that the RB20 was initially lacking and which was initially making a significant difference in favor of the red. The third sector of the Australian track is, in fact, a stretch that puts the front of the single-seaters to the test, with long curves, changes of direction at medium speed, trajectories to choose and a lot of centrifugal force to fight for long periods of time, and that's it listen again to Verstappen's team radio in Q1, which talks about a high level of understeer in his car, to understand how complicated things were initially at RedBull.
Instead, we immediately underlined how the SF24 has one of the greatest strengths shown so far in the front end and in fact, if both Sainz and Leclerc recorded times that were sometimes higher, sometimes lower but still very close to those of the Red Bulls in the first two sectors of the track, in the third the two Ferraris were regularly the fastest in a marked way, guaranteeing the best overall performances in both Q1 and Q2 and the perception at a certain point of having pole almost in their pocket.
When the car isn't enough, Max arrives
The track however, as we said at the beginning, went in the RedBull direction and at the start of Q3 Verstappen found himself in a car capable of responding to his inputs properly and recorded a monstrous lap, while all the others were still in the process of “understanding” the track. The 16.0 recorded on the first attempt in Q3, in fact, earned Verstappen pole almost more than the following lap, given that he moved the level so much as to induce his opponents to exceed in the final lap in an attempt to give it all. Once upon a time the flying lap was certainly not Verstappen's specialty, and even today it remains the “discipline” where the Dutchman appears slightly more vulnerable, but in recent seasons, precisely in qualifying, he has shown that he can put everything together when it counts most in the best way great champions, and we can't help but give him full credit for this. In this regard, let's see the data from his lap compared to that of Sainz.
Let's see that in the first sector Sainz was ahead of Verstappen, with a maximum peak of almost 2 tenths at the braking point of turn 3, with the SF24 once again confirming its goodness in braking and corner entry, thanks precisely to the strong and stable front. In the full section, however, Verstappen dominates, thanks to a notable performance in acceleration (both traction and acceleration) which shows both the good power of the ex-Honda engine and the aerodynamic efficiency of the RB20. The start of the third sector sees Verstappen ahead by only about 70 thousandths of a second over Sainz, and, considering that that stretch had been the Maranello drivers' hunting ground for all the previous sessions, we feel like saying that pole could have been within reach. However, Sainz exaggerates at turn 10 and ends up slightly long, also compromising the subsequent sprint up to turn 11 and leaving around 3 and a half tenths on the asphalt. From there, the Ferrari driver did well not to be influenced by his mistake and still took advantage of the SF24 in the final part of the track, regaining from our calculations around 1 tenth over Verstappen and finishing the qualifying in second place, thus guaranteeing the start in first gear. queue for the race. In general, Sainz's performance still seems to be worthy of praise, given the complicated physical conditions in which the Spaniard faced qualifying, however only beaten by the best Verstappen. It should be noted that the load indices and the standard deviations of the speeds indicate in unison a higher aerodynamic load for the Ferrari compared to the Red Bull, an aspect that is also reflected in the driving styles, with Verstappen forced to drive more “V-shaped”, anticipating the apex very quickly and then return to traction very soon, unlike Sainz (but from the data we can also confirm Leclerc) who generally with this car equipped with a good load tend to bring much more speed to the center of the corner and move the apex of rope further ahead than the Dutchman, also thanks to an excellent level of performance in entering the curve. The problems with the Ferrari's rear seen in the first two races in Melbourne have not been seen so far, and the SF24 immediately showed itself to be very close to the RB20 at least on the flying lap. The final result of Charles Leclerc, however, was opaque and, after not having found the right feeling with the progress of the track conditions, he tried an “all out” by putting a lot of load on the front of the car, but ended up exaggerating and having a car with imperfect aerodynamics and too much sudden oversteer on the final lap, forcing the Monegasque to a disappointing fifth place (which will be fourth after Perez's penalty).
It's worth setting the alarm for the race
It's true: seeing Max Verstappen in pole position means hearing the Dutch anthem playing on the podium for the umpteenth time in the distance, but theand prospects for the race seem a little less obvious than usual, given that the less than perfect front of the RB20 appeared to be a bit of a pain on the long runs, with the formation of graining which could cost the world leader and his teammate Perez a lot of time. On the contrary, Ferrari itself appeared particularly strong on pace, always showing very little degradation and only small hints of graining, never problematic to the point of generating drops in performance. It will therefore be interesting to find out if Verstappen will be able to fly alone until the usual time or if he will suffer the pressure of Sainz, and if Leclerc will be able to climb back up to the podium, knowing then that at Albert Park the Safety Cars that shuffle the cards and the strategies are all 'agenda. There therefore seem to be valid reasons to set the alarm clock and enjoy the race.
#Australian #qualifying #telemetry #Sainz #Leclerc39s #mistakes
