Carlos Sainz fifth, Charles Leclerc tenth. There are two different themes in the analysis of the difficult Friday experienced by Ferrari at Silverstone, which ended with a result far from expectations. The most striking case concerns Leclerc, who found himself with zero laps launched at the end of SQ3. While he was in the queue that formed at the exit of the pit lane two minutes from the end of the session, Charles found himself with the engine off at a moment in which the countdown towards the checkered flag left no room for unexpected events. The Monegasque then managed to restart the power unit, but although he crossed the outlap very quickly, he was unable to cross the finish line before the end of the session. No time, tenth place.
When the engine stopped, there was an initial heated exchange between Leclerc and his track engineer. “What happened, guys?” “The anti-stall kicked in,” Bryan Bozzi replied. “But the anti-stall doesn’t stop the engine, and I don’t know if you noticed, but the engine stopped.” At that point, Charles was asked to remain silent with a clear message: “We’ll talk about it later in the garage.” The atypical nature of the incident that happened to Leclerc is due precisely to the lack of functioning of the system that should prevent these situations.
Charles Leclerc, Ferrari SF-24
Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images
“I don’t know what happened – commented Leclerc hotly – I was in the pitlane and everything went off. The team told me that we will talk when I get back to the garage, so I will know more when I talk to the engineers.” Shortly afterwards Fred Vasseur confirmed: “The anti-stall entered the pit lane, the procedure was a bit long, we were in the queue and Charles had to move the car to the right side to reset the power unit”.
Things went better for Sainz, who completed the session without any unexpected events. The fifth final time (also favored by Hamilton’s mistake in Q1 which damaged the floor of the Mercedes) illustrates the potential of the SF24, which, as in Barcelona, is back to hopping on the fast corners. The term ‘bouncing’ now seemed destined for the Formula 1 archive, a word that characterized 2022 and the first half of 2023, but at Ferrari it suddenly and mysteriously returned to the news. Sainz had already spoken about it on the eve of the Silverstone weekend, but everything seemed linked to the characteristics of the Catalunya circuit and Ferrari hoped to have left the problem there.
![Carlos Sainz, Ferrari SF-24](https://cdn.motorsport.com/images/mgl/0RrvqpB0/s1000/carlos-sainz-ferrari-sf-24.jpg)
Carlos Sainz, Ferrari SF-24
Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images
Spielberg’s verdict has so far been different to the Scuderia’s hopes, and both in turn 6 and in the 9-10 sequence the SF-24 started to bounce again, a problem complained above all by Sainz. “I think I did three very clean laps – explained Carlos – but as we had already seen in the free practice session, we are not particularly comfortable with the soft tires. I think it was impossible to get into the top three positions, and in the end fifth position reflects what we had already seen in free practice.”
More concise, but along the same lines, was Leclerc’s comment: “I could certainly have done better than tenth place, but we weren’t very strong in terms of performance.”
“Bouncing certainly never helps,” Vasseur admitted. “If there is a bouncing phenomenon, it will need to be fixed, but in this type of curve, with these kerbs, if we compare the cars, I’m not sure which one has the most bouncing, but in any case it definitely needs to be fixed because it wastes a lot of time. It can’t be quantified, also because the same phenomenon occurred in Barcelona on curves 7-9, there was a bouncing, partly due to the overheating of the tyres.” According to Sainz, the overheating is instead caused by the bouncing and ends up influencing the curves following those in which the bouncing occurs.
In view of the continuation of the weekend, the sprint race offers the two Ferrari drivers little chance of being able to aspire to the top-3. The 24 laps scheduled for tomorrow’s sprint race will be of help above all for checks and tests in view of the afternoon qualifying and Sunday’s race. At the moment, however, Ferrari remains fourth force.
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