Ferrari and Leclerc king of Monza. With a mind-blowing performance in terms of strategy but actually tactics, because the extended stint with hard tyres was part of the possible plan since before the start.
The SF-24 on Sunday at Monza was not the fastest car on the track. The McLarens had more pace, but in reality Charles the winner was much slower than Sainz took a year ago to sign third place, clearly behind the Verstappen-Perez duo first and second in a Red Bull much better than this one.
But, in the analysis of the courageous winning ride of the red color (after practice and qualifying no one could sensibly predict that with the Hards it would have been possible to drive 38 laps at that pace…), in this day full of self-confidence there is another aspect that cannot be underestimated: the tires.
Pirelli, with its Hards capable of holding two driving shifts, has shown off a high-performance but also highly reliable product. At Monza, this year, thanks also to some lowered kerbs, the laps were very fast. Norris’ pole, on Saturday, was a hair’s breadth away from that of a now ancient Hamilton with the Mercedes. And that was the fastest pole ever, but today’s single-seaters are much heavier than those of back then.
And these very heavy F1s (due to the excess weight caused by hybrid technology starting in 2014, but then increasingly “fatter” almost year after year) are a massacre for the tyres.
Who remembers the 13-inchers in the race until 2021, and sometimes in trouble in the final stages of the race that tested not only the tread but also the structure? There were many hard days for Pirelli until three and a half years ago. But from 2022 they moved to 18 inches and the music has changed. Now, with these tires for rims with a diameter increased by over 12 centimeters, and with a total circumference greater than six compared to 2021, the Italian tires have become a bomb-proof certainty for this increasingly faster F1. Credit goes to the Italian technicians who in the two-year period 2020-21 tested and re-tested them, refining a completely innovative project for a F1 that since the Sixties of the last century had been accustomed to those small, belly-shaped wheels that today, compared to modern reality, seem almost cartoonish.
The 18-inch project was a revolutionary one, which did not only concern the dimensions, but every single component of the tire structure, profiles and compounds obviously. A grueling job: over 10,000 hours of indoor testing, more than 5,000 hours of simulation and more than 70 different possible solutions (they remained at the concept level) to arrive at the 30 possible tires tested by almost all the teams, for a total of over 20,000 kilometers traveled. In short, this is how we arrived at the famous six different compounds of this year that Pirelli can name during the championship. An increase that allows for even more specific compounds to be available for the characteristics of each track.
In short. well done Ferrari and Leclerc, with the monstrous laps on the modern Monza. But well done – it must be said – also Pirelli.
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