Ferrari admits it has failed to solve the ‘real mystery’ it has faced in understanding why performance has fluctuated so much in F1’s new era of ground effects.
The new generation 2022 F1 machine has brought many surprises this year. F1 teams may be falling behind on race weekends when they expected much better results. On the other hand, there are teams that perform far beyond what seems good.
This year, the Ferrari F1 team has sought an answer to that situation. After struggling recently at Spa-Francorchamps, he put in a much stronger performance at Monza. Both tracks should equally demand low downforce and good aerodynamic efficiency.
Jock Clear, senior performance engineer at the Ferrari F1 team, admits even his team’s best engineers can’t fully explain why there are such inconsistencies in performance.
“Honestly, if I really knew these things, I would have gotten the golden bullet. These things are really hard to work out.”
“I think you’re talking about teams that are performing really well in the race and teams that are going backwards, but there’s a real mystery behind all of that that we can’t figure out.”
“That’s why this task is not simple, and that’s why it’s so interesting to all of you[the media]and all of us.”
Jock Clear admits that the differences between Spa-Francorchamps and Monza cannot be fully explained, but as the team gains more experience with the car, they have a better understanding of what is going on. said to have started.
“Honestly, we don’t have all the answers and we still don’t understand exactly what happened at Spa,” said Jock Clear.
“We had some ideas and obviously acted on them.”
“Coming to Monza, which is a circuit with less downforce, but with a difference, like Spa, I feel like I have some understanding of what was going on at Spa.
“There may be more revealed later this year, but we are continually learning.”
“None of us know all the details because it’s always been relatively sporting. There are a lot of areas where you have to make your best guess because you don’t know what other people are doing.”
Jock Clear doesn’t think the new generation of ground effect cars will be particularly difficult to understand, but the fact that the rules are in their early stages means that by the time F1 teams fully understand them, I think it means we have a long way to go.
“I think it’s just because it’s so new,” added Jock Clear.
“There’s always a steep learning curve with any new development or new set of rules, and everyone is on that steep learning curve.”
“We saw it at the beginning of the year. A lot of people were saying to us ‘why is your car so fast at the beginning of the season?’ It’s a relative sport.”
“Perhaps we just arrived with a little better understanding of it, and some people just found out where their cars were.”
“That’s a great part of starting the season with the new regulations. There’s obviously a high-performance aspect to the car package, but you also need to understand the car and how the drivers drive it. ”
“If you have a driver with the quality of Max (Verstappen), the quality of Charles (Leclerc), the quality of Carlos (Sainz), expect them to be there very soon.”
“They are human beings, they work on their talents every day and they have improved over the past year. Maybe they understand more.”
“These all come together in different proportions, different timings, different teams. When it’s a relative sport, you never know all the answers.”
Category: F1 / Ferrari / F1 machine