The weekend of the Monaco Grand Prix has begun, and for Ferrari you could tell it couldn’t have started better. The two free practice sessions were lives And funny, to underline the tradition that in the principality the weekend is a growth of fun for the fans up to the qualification, while the race then leaves a lot to be desired for obvious reasons. On the Munich city route the qualification it is clearly a huge part of the final result and all the teams have practically focused on that alone, leaving the pace tests only for the final final minutes. If in the first free practice session Ferrari and Red Bull had been extremely similar in performance, in the second the step forward of the redhead was remarkable. The set-up has been changed, the front has become more precise both in the guide and in the braking stability and the front tires have proved themselves more continuous and homogeneous like behavior along the ride. In the streets of the principality, the aerodynamic aspect is important almost marginalwith the performance you are looking for through mechanical adhesion, and it is evident that the two F1-75s have had an evolution from the point of view of suspension package between first and second session. There dynamic response of the car it appeared more progressivealbeit softer in the critical passages on the curbs, and this has greatly improved the confidence of both riders along the lap. Sainz he closed with a time very close to that of Leclerc, demonstrating that the compromise brought to the track makes the car run well in its critical componentsespecially the tires. However, it is not all for granted and by looking at the comparison between the data of Leclerc’s lap and that of Perez, third classified at 379 thousandths from the landlord, we understand why.
The first thing we see is that Ferrari is, to a great surprise, the fastest in the two straights longer, that of the pits and that of the tunnel. This tells us that it is very likely that between the two cars there was also one power unit mapping difference considerable, with the Maranello team that seems to have pushed a little more than their rivals. The absolute strength of the redhead seemed the first sectorthanks to an important level of power that makes the difference in the ascent of Saint Devote. Considering the mass of the cars and how steep this climb is, this section should be particularly good this year power sensitive. Furthermore the greater load of the F1-75 makes itself felt in the section of the Massenet and Casino curves, helping a lot the drivers of the red. The capacity then of keep brakes and tires alive even after the tunnel (something that the Ferrari drivers could not do in the first free practice session) he then brought the guarantee of a strong front in the last corners of the track, where the directionality of the car allows you to go on the gas early and therefore to save precious time at every corner. Not only this, looking at the accelerator / brake map below we notice how one of the main characteristics of the F1-75 is that of being able to “Bring” the braking inside the curve. The stability of the car with the rear which proves strong in turnfollowing a very precise front, however, allows riders to modulate braking continuing to decelerate up to the chord point, instead of having to travel meters in “cruise” between the end of braking and the reopening of the throttle in traction. We marked the points where we noticed this with the purple arrows and as you can see this happens for almost all the corners of the first and third sector. The only stretch still not perfectly fine seems to be the slowest ever on the trackfrom the Mirabeau curve to the very narrow hairpin bend of the Grand Hotel (formerly Loews), where Perez performs sometimes better than Leclerc’s, with the stopwatch stopping in the second sector in fact just 3 thousandths of advantage for the Monegasque. RedBull seems to be confirmed strong when the strokes at very low speed are prolonged, so without violent braking that stress the longitudinal axis of the car. There front suspension of the RB18 seems to be doing its duty when it has full delegation of adherence and directionality of the car, being the speed so low (the hairpin today was traveled around 46 km / h) that aerodynamics are useless. On the other hand, the F1-75 appeared with a better overall balance, with a strong front but at the same time neutral enough to guarantee confidence, so much so that even Sainz, who prefers the strong rear of the car, found the right place quickly. The goodness of the Ferrari set-up was then confirmed by the briefs race pace testswhere the red showed the best times with an advantage of about 2/3 tenths over Red Bull.
It is not certain that it is over here, however, since the variable over the weekend remain several. The night job at Red Bull it could bring the Austrian team to considerably closer to Ferrari, given the goodness of Newey’s car in the strait, already verified several times this year. It will be interesting then to see if the F1-75 he will keep his advantage in the draws when the engine mappings they will also be pushed by the opponents. Finally the weather conditions of the weekend, which, apart from the hypothetical rain for Sunday, should bring a significant lowering of temperatureswith the equilibria and the I work on the tires which will be recalibrated for the new conditions. We will then see how the weekend will evolve, in anticipation of a Saturday, which usually provides one of the most beautiful driving shows of the year.
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