Ferrari are bringing their first major upgrade of the new Formula 1 season to the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix this weekend. It will be key to determining their objectives for the remainder of 2024.
The Scuderia need to strike back after McLaren introduced an ‘astonishing’ set of developments at the last race in Miami. Lando Norris was the fastest man on track on race day and he beat Max Verstappen to the victory, albeit with the aid of a safety car.
That’s now one win apiece for McLaren and Ferrari in the battle to catch Red Bull first. Fred Vasseur will hope his team can regain the initiative on home soil.
The team have incorporated Red Bull’s ‘shark mouth’ sidepod entrance into their new design. Their engineers at Maranello have been working on the revised SF-24 since March.
Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz both had the opportunity to test the upgrades over a 100km filming day at the Fiorano circuit last week. Leclerc is hoping they’ll deliver his first victory since the 2022 Austrian Grand Prix.
Sky Sports F1 pundit Karun Chandhok has heard that Ferrari are ‘rather pleased’ with what they’re seeing in the data. But the key question now is whether that translates to the race track.
F1 expert adamant Ferrari can’t gain four tenths at Imola
Ferrari reportedly expect to gain around three-tenths of a second per lap to Red Bull in qualifying pace. And they anticipate even more progress in race trim.
But speaking on the Racing News 365 podcast, F1 expert Ruud Dimmers questioned those projections. He doesn’t believe that’s a realistic goal for one upgrade and has accused Ferrari of wishful thinking.
Racing driver Tom Coronel was similarly sceptical. He pointed out that, on a sub-80-second lap of Imola, it will even be harder to find such a significant chunk.
Dimmers said: “Four tenths faster with one update, that is almost impossible […] If you have to believe the Italian media I think Ferrari now has 59 world titles.
“They now have a bit of the inlets of Red Bull’s sidepods. Actually the old concept, because it is not the letterbox that Red Bull now has.
“But gain three, four, five tenths with one upgrade? The wish is often the father of the thought.”
Coronel added: “And don’t forget, on such a short track you are not going to make that big difference. Look, if you do that at Spa-Francorchamps or Suzuka, you can find it very clearly. But at Imola? No, I completely believe none of it.”
Ferrari change Charles Leclerc engineer before Emilia Romagna GP
While much of the focus will be on how the upgrade performs, another big story heading to Imola is a change on Leclerc’s side of the garage. Ferrari announced in a statement last week that his race engineer, Xavi Marcos, would work on other ‘important company programmes’ instead.
Marcos has been Leclerc’s right-hand man since he graduated from Sauber for the 2019 season. But from this weekend, he’ll instead be working with performance engineer Bryan Bozzi.
Bozzi has worked with the team for the last 10 years, so the Monegasque will already know him well. It may take time, however, before they can extract the most from their partnership.
The 26-year-old has shown improved form in the past couple of races. Having previously admitted that Sainz was doing a better job, he out-qualified and out-raced the Spaniard in both China and Miami.
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