For all the science and technology, the millions invested in research and simulation tools, when it comes to the last decisive margin of victory between two top teams, F1 can still be a black art.
This weekend’s French Grand Prix will be a perfect case study, with Ferrari and Red Bull taking completely different approaches to downforce levels and tire use.
On Sunday evening, one of these approaches will have been proven correct, the other not. But it is absolutely not something that can be called in advance. All we have after qualifying is a more refined set of questions than we had at the weekend.
At the center are the downforce levels, with Red Bull running a very tight car for Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez and Ferrari preferring a higher wing level, which is sure to be faster in a single qualifying lap. Yes, Leclerc took pole with the help of a perfectly timed tow from teammate Carlos Sainz, but the team’s data analysis calculated that the assist found Leclerc just short of 0 ,2 seconds. He was on pole with 0.304s.
The Ferrari is visibly more planted, especially in the long corners of the final sector. The Red Bull make big gains on the straights and even in that part of the lap – from the second part of the Mistral straight and passing through Signes – where Leclerc took the tow, Verstappen takes the time easily and not having the benefit of a slipstream.
Ferrari and Red Bull have been in and out of phase with each other on downforce levels throughout the season so far, but it has an added significance here at Ricard. Because the decisive factor of the race seems to be the use of tires. Fast, long-lasting turns in these scorching temperatures put a lot of strain on the fronts in particular.
If the Ferrari has a pattern of weakness in its race performances this year, it is its ability to look after the outside front tire around those circuits that place great demand on it. It’s what lost her the Imola sprint race and the Miami Grand Prix, and what she was going to lose Silverstone until Verstappen hit the AlphaTauri debris.
So there’s a definite logic to Ferrari moving away from Red Bull’s low downforce approach here. A thin rear wing requires a matching low slip angle at the front and the front tires will slide more to reach their optimum slip angle. The more the front tire drags along the surface instead of digging into it, the greater the propensity for the grain and the greater the rate of wear.
Exactly one year ago, Ferrari was hopelessly uncompetitive in the race here due to heavy wear and tear at the front. While they feel they got to the bottom of this issue after an internal investigation, and this is a very different, much more competitive car, it would be natural for the team to be wary of making a setup that in any way threatens to repeat this experience.
But there is wear and there is thermal degradation. And knowing which mechanism is most important on a given day on a given track is arguably the most important black art of all. There is no obvious right answer before the event. It just comes back right after.
If the limitation turns out to be thermal degradation of the front tires, you may have too much downforce. The common sense equation of more downforce = better tire use can be changed if the energy taken from the tire by all that downforce simply overwhelms it, starts to overheat the core and loses the ability of the construction to properly support the tread.
Red Bull knows this better than most. In the early days of the Pirelli era, when Red Bull had a huge downforce advantage thanks to mastery of the blown diffuser, downforce often had to be reduced just to allow the tires to live.
With full tire war tires, Red Bull would have been outrunning the opposition. This, by the way, was the opinion of a Pirelli engineer at the time after analyzing the maximum loads that each car could generate… It was only the thermal grade that kept the Bulls vaguely within reach of the opposition
That is not what is happening now. Red Bull seem to have built their car around the tire they have rather than a theoretical ideal and it’s the Ferrari that clearly creates more downforce, even when running with comparable wing levels. “Whatever wing we put on, it usually costs us a little bit [high-speed corners] compared to Ferrari”, as Verstappen points out.
What that downforce also helps is to get the tires up to temperature in a single lap, something Red Bull struggled to do during Friday practice, to the point where Verstappen deliberately gave up long-term time to try fix the temperature of the front tires. in one go. An intensive session in the factory simulator overnight by Sebastien Buemi definitely found something in the set-up and Verstappen explained that the biggest difference from Friday to Saturday was in the low-speed corners. The high speed deficit remained ie.
But it is Verstappen’s explanation of the counterpoint that may prove key. “Even though Ferrari is faster at high speed, the tires will be so hot that you can’t push as much at high speed and so we hope our top speed will help us more.”
“It’s always a craft,” says Christian Horner. “What we don’t know standing here today is, are they going to take more energy out of the tire in a lap? Is that going to penalize them in the long run? Are they going to be able to maintain it? What’s the best way to get lap time?
“What it’s going to be about is how the front tires are going to survive out there through those long turns, 11-12 and the first sector.”
It’s not a fact that Ferrari got it wrong, that they paid too high a price for race pace for their qualifying speed. It’s just a possibility. The balance point between wear or temperature as the critical limitation could tip it one way or the other and could be the post-race question: why on earth did Red Bull decide to sacrifice so much aerodynamic performance high speed for a tire? concern that turned out to be unfounded?
Then there’s the matter of Ferrari’s new floor here.
With a higher roof at the inner end of the tunnels, and a staggered arrangement as it moves outboard, the floor may have changed the car’s aerodynamic balance in a way that favors the thermal performance of the front tires.
Red Bull also has a revised arrangement of the tunnel entry vanes.
How the two cars use their tires will also have a profound effect on strategy. It’s a race that is expected to be between one and two stops. If the Ferrari works the front tires a little too much, two stops could rescue it.
“We’ve put the car in what we think is our best performance window,” says Ferrari’s Laurent Mekies. “The trade-off is easy to see. Downforce and tire performance and if you get it wrong you can be exposed.
“The best thing about this sport is that you have the answer on Sunday night. Whoever wins will have had the best strategy, the best setups, the best drivers…”