The first day of testing for the Monaco Grand Prix was certainly one-sided. Charles Leclerc dominated free practice far and wide, not only from a chronometric point of view, but in every aspect. Always very fast, with every compound and at every run, he always had at least one “phase” of advantage over all his opponents, that is, the Monegasque was the first to set the best time, and when the others closed in on him thanks to the improvement of the track, he lowered the limit further. The images from the onboard showed a Ferrari in the full hands of the driver, who drove pushing hard but with very few errors and always in control of the single-seater, with the mastery of setting trajectories that already skimmed walls and guardrails. The gap imposed on the competition, with Hamilton the closest at almost two tenths, is in reality downright false, given that among the top 5 Leclerc is the one with the greatest difference (almost 3 tenths) between the ideal lap (i.e. the time obtained considering all the best sectors of the session) and real lap, as per the following table.
DRIVER | IDEAL LAP | GAP |
LECLERC | 71.004 | 0 |
HAMILTON | 71,466 | 0.462 |
ALONSO | 71,625 | 0.621 |
VERSTAPPEN | 71,745 | 0.741 |
NORRIS | 71,931 | 0.927 |
The potential gap of almost half a second to Hamilton, 7 tenths to Verstappen and 8 to Norris gives the idea of how much Leclerc was actually master of the house in every sense. From the data we can appreciate some further aspects.
Ferrari the most complete, Mercedes second strength
Even though on a track like Monaco the telemetry (also collected at low frequency) only tells part of the truth on the track, some interesting considerations still emerge. First of all, in this case we note how the Ferrari is the most complete car. While the opponents alternated performance peaks at various points on the track, the red car seemed to go strong everywhere, with a few more flashes both in traction between Mirabeau and Loews, and at the two Ss of the Piscine, where Leclerc always entered the first strong, and with enough grip to slightly advance the line in second to improve subsequent traction towards the Rascasse. Second force of the day was Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes, less suffering than the other races, with the seven-time World Champion clearly committed (and having fun) driving his W15, whose modifications (which are more returns to more traditional concepts) seem to work in terms of confidence. However, it is difficult to imagine the Brackley team fighting for pole when everyone has optimized the set-up and squeezed the last cent out of the lap time. We will see if Hamilton will be able to lead the team to a small rebirth in the Principality. Behind him an excellent Fernando Alonso, whose data clearly shows how Aston Martin has an approach totally dedicated to slow sections, with a total predilection for mechanics, entirely leaving out the weakest phase of the single-seater, namely the aerodynamics in the fast corners. A forced compromise but which, together with the Asturian’s driving skills, seems to work best for now.
RedBull down (but not only). McLaren looking for a better compromise
It is quite clear then, from the data, how conservative Red Bull actually was on the Power Unit on this first day, even more so than on the usual Friday races. But the lack of straight-line performance isn’t entirely down to power. Once again the RB20 seems to be blocked for now by a particularly rigid set-up, created to favor aerodynamics but which, on the bumps in Monaco, is proving to be significantly penalizing, to the point of forcing the pilots to delay opening the throttle at the exit curved and therefore compromising the reach performance. However, the rigid set-up seemed to work in the long runs, a bit like we had seen in Imola, with the car responding decidedly better with a full tank of fuel, but which the Dutchman could only exploit by starting at least from the front row. On the McLaren side however, we noticed from the data that the MCL38 behaves very well in the high speed sections, but accumulates all the gap between the Mirabeu and the Portier in the second sector, and between the second S of the swimming pools and the Noghes in the third, confirming the very slow sections as a weak point at the moment. The impression is that the compromise brought to the track by the Woking team is not yet sufficiently oriented towards mechanics but that it still has a prevalence of aerodynamics, probably also with a certain suspension stiffness, and it will be up to the engineers led by Andrea Stella to decide whether move the car’s work center to a setting that favors slow curves even more or if the spectrum of possibilities offered by the car does not allow it.
Long run: Leclerc not happy and blocked by traffic but Sainz fast. Piastri also did well with McLaren
Finally, looking at the performances in the long run simulations, it must first be stated that for everyone they were often strongly influenced by the traffic on the track. Leclerc in this case wasn’t particularly brilliant, with a couple of very good laps, but the Monegasque will need to work a bit on the set-up to make the car work a little better with a full tank of fuel. It must be said that it is unlikely that Ferrari will give up anything on the flying lap given the track, but it will probably be a matter of optimizing everything possible to find a little more pace without giving up qualifying. However, the garage has the reference and it is excellent, because Carlos Sainz, not as fast as his teammate on the flying lap, did very well on the pace simulation, giving the team the ideal completion of the day’s picture. Oscar Piastri’s simulation is also excellent, confirming somewhat that with a full tank of fuel the more rigid cars and with a set-up more oriented towards aerodynamics behave better.
In conclusion, we cannot help but say that, after today, Leclerc is the number 1 candidate for pole position. But it is equally obligatory to remember that the others will work hard and will most likely come significantly closer to the Ferrari seen in free practice, that the track conditions will change as the sessions go by and that in any case doing everything perfect on such a difficult track and with such a competition which will in any case be very fierce, remains a difficult undertaking to complete. We’ll see, although the race is particularly negative, qualifying in Monaco remains one of the best moments of the season.
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