2024 Dutch GP: low-downforce setups were rewarded as Ferrari executes the "Fred Vasseur plan"

08/27/2024 03:51 AM

The Dutch Grand Prix marked the return of Formula 1 action on track, and McLaren’s pursuit of the top resumed decisively. Lando Norris's dominant performance at Max Verstappen’s home race came with an updated MCL38, giving the impression that, once again, the upgrades brought to the track by the Woking team were perfect. The papaya-colored car undoubtedly dominated the weekend, with only a less impressive Oscar Piastri preventing a double podium, but it’s right to take an even closer look at McLaren’s overwhelming power seen on track.

What impressed was McLaren’s great balance in all conditions, low-downforce setup, and it’s pace and tire management. The first point to note is that conditions changed significantly throughout the Zandvoort weekend, starting with Friday’s rain and cold, moving to Saturday’s 20 degrees, and reaching 30 degrees for the track surface temperature during the race. In all these conditions, the updated MCL38 consistently showed no problems and even outperformed all its competition. The Dutch track made tire usage windows a key factor, and the ability to succeed in every condition is a prerogative of a car that responds perfectly to the inputs of drivers and engineers, further confirming the remarkable correlation between simulation and track that characterizes this phase of continuous growth for the team led by team principal Andrea Stella.

It was also evident how the car kept improving, even as the downforce levels were reduced between Friday and Saturday, giving Lando Norris excellent speed advantages. Data analysis shows that the Briton managed his tires cautiously for much of the race in high-speed corners, then took advantage of his car’s superior grip in long corners and traction phases, with the chronic issue of rear overheating seemingly completely resolved. Of course, Lando Norris’s great performance must be highlighted, as his management of the car during the race is one of his best weapons. The Woking car, beyond a clearly successful weekend on a friendly track, no longer seems to have any weak points and remains the absolute favorite to win (at least) the constructors’ title.

Now let’s focus on the winning low-downforce setup, the Max Verstappen anomaly, and the possible explanation for Red Bull’s loss of performance at Zandvoort.

One thing we noticed in general is how cars that opted for a lower downforce setup benefited greatly in the race. For example, between Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, qualifying data showed that the Australian had chosen more downforce (probably thinking that greater load would help with tire management), but in the end, Piastri's pace was not on par with his teammate's. Even within Red Bull, the two drivers had markedly different setups, with Max Verstappen visibly running more downforce than Sergio Perez, and the Mexican overall found decent performance compared to many of the recent races. Ferrari itself, struggling with a lack of downforce at this stage of the 2024 Formula 1 championship, unexpectedly came alive during the race, confirming the better behavior of the cars on track that did not have maximum aerodynamic downforce.

Looking at the average telemetry data, it is also evident how Max Verstappen was losing to Lando Norris specifically on all the straight sections of the track, held back by an evidently too high drag. In a race where managing the tires properly was still important, the fact that lower downforce provided better performance seems contradictory, but the explanations, in our opinion, lie primarily in the change of conditions: the warm track but cool air allowed the drivers to bring the tires up to temperature without the risk of overheating them due to sliding. Moreover, once the operating window was hit, a multiplying effect was triggered, where the great grip provided by the tires used in ideal conditions further limited sliding, even more than a few points of downforce.

Once this balance was found, as Lando Norris did, but also the two Ferrari SF-24 cars, performance and grip could be achieved without encountering overheating issues. The moderately warm track surface also prevented the hard tires from suffering graining, making them ideal for the long second stint. This proved to be of great help for Ferrari: the SF24 continues to show enormous difficulties with softer compounds, even just due to the greater sidewall and carcass movement of the tire, which creates disturbances to the car's aerodynamics. Being able to run almost the entire race on the hard tire without issues nullified this problem and further helped the Maranello team secure the podium in the Dutch Grand Prix, which was entirely unexpected beforehand. In the second stint, even Carlos Sainz recorded an average lap time "only" a couple of tenths off Lando Norris, confirming that Ferrari was indeed in good form in terms of race pace, thanks also to what has been analyzed so far.

At the same time, the Ferrari technicians and engineers are aware that there is certainly no cause for celebration, given the half-minute gap to Lando Norris, but things in the race definitely went much better than expected, and, listening to the interviews, much better than what the Scuderia's own members had anticipated. The mantra repeated by team principal Frederic Vasseur several times before the race was that it was essential to get the maximum points possible even on difficult weekends, and this time the team undoubtedly succeeded in an exemplary manner. Charles Leclerc’s podium, achieved with a great race from the Monegasque and a perfect strategy from the Ferrari pit wall, and Carlos Sainz’s excellent comeback meant that the Maranello team brought home just one point less than Red Bull in the constructors’ standings and a good 15 points more than Mercedes in a decidedly negative weekend for the team led by Toto Wolff.

Mercedes hit the track with a completely wrong setup choice, which put George Russell and Lewis Hamilton out of the ideal operating window for the tires (especially the hard compound), forcing them to make a double stop in an attempt to exploit a final stint on the soft tire. An interesting note on Charles Leclerc’s strategy comes from Andrea Stella’s words, who revealed after the race that the team did not try to protect Oscar Piastri from Charles Leclerc's undercut because they wanted to avoid triggering the pit stop cycle too early and therefore risk putting Lando Norris in trouble up front. The gap opened by the McLaren drivers was somehow highlighted by the two Ferrari drivers after the race, with Charles Leclerc directly asking Max Verstappen about his gap to Norris and then asking Lando what his pace was at the end of the race, while Carlos Sainz, in interviews, mentioned that he expects a McLaren difficult to beat at Monza, but also pointing out that others are not far behind. The doubt that seems to be lingering in the minds of the Ferrari drivers is whether what is essentially a technical crisis for Red Bull is giving way to another papaya-colored dominance.

This seems plausible given the effectiveness of the work done by the Woking team, but the gap that now appears to be opened by Andrea Stella and his team is also due to the mistakes of their rivals, who have each, in turn, missed at least one round of aerodynamic updates. According to what has now been announced, the next team to try to make a leap forward will be Ferrari, both at Monza and in the following races. The fact that the Italian track is chosen for the next updates of the SF-24 car appears technically unusual, given the unique characteristics of the track. However, this may mean that the upcoming changes have broad resonance, concerning the aero-mechanical foundations of the car, and are not just aimed at increasing downforce or addressing specific deficiencies. The wait for the Italian Grand Prix is short anyway, so we will find out very soon.

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