Was a great weekend of racing for Italy in Melbourne, with the Ferrari double in Formula 1 but also the podium for Leonardo Fornaroli e Gabriel Mini. Once the enthusiasm has settled, the question is only one: in Australia a new one has begun Red Dawn or was it just a nocturnal glimmer in a season destined to repeat the already seen script in the previous two years? The first two races had scared everyone. The problem concerned the attractiveness of the competition itself, annihilated by one excessive power Red Bull (the result of ideas, intuitions, organization and enormous capacity, it must be said and reiterated) which was even more fearsome due to the length of the calendar, never so full of appointments. The success of Carlos Sainzalready in itself a story within history due to the physical conditions in which the Spanish driver showed up for the appointment, changed the cards on the table by putting in a drawer, at least for about ten days, all the discussions about Formula Noia.
The Australian GP did not allow for comparison – One point is certain. There Ferrari And more competitive of last year. The question is how much it is towards the Red Bull: in this respect the Melbourne GP provided some clues but few truths. Because both cars from the team Milton Keynes they had problems, making a difficult comparison with the Reds. The brake of Verstappen gone up in flames, net of the understandable euphoria generated by the record-breaking champion who, once in a while, everything goes wrong, prevented him from getting off the track clear directions sui power relations Red Bull-Ferrari, ending up ruining a potential race of overtakes e counter-overtaking for the first position that Formula 1 has been waiting for for a long, long time. Instead they just stay doubts: Verstappen’s Red Bull, already suffering on the second lap when it was overtaken by Sainz’s Ferrari, would still have been attackable in optimal conditions? The performance of doesn’t help either Sergio Perez, so far twice second in the GPs, taking advantage of an unattainable car. After the race Oscar Piastri he declared himself surprised by the poor speed of the Mexican, but Perez has little to do with it. The decline in his performance as the laps went by was caused by one tear-off visor which slipped into part of the underbody causing a loss of load aerodynamic which, according to Chris Hornerit cost him two tenths per lap.
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Signs of an improved Ferrari – However, although we cannot ignore the two “crippled” Red Bulls, there are elements within Ferrari that lead tooptimism. Already in free practice some details had emerged that should not be underestimated, with a Red car which for the first time had demonstrated on the track that it had both the tempo that the step we are. In the previous GPs, where the Red Bull’s performance in free practice had been positive, Red Bull had immediately made it clear, either with the pace or with the lap time, the existence of a gap. Not in Melbourne. And even moving from the tests to the race, no elements emerged capable of highlighting this difference. Especially on the graining, the rubber curls that affect the performance of the tire. Ferraris were the single-seaters that had them suffered less. In recent seasons Red Bull has been exceptional at controlling the thermal degradation on the tyres, but on the Australian circuit, resurfaced in 2022 and therefore slower to rubberize (also because it is not a track where racing takes place all year round), that was not the problem that caused wear and tear of tires. Ferrari was the team capable of best solving the challenging equation of both front and rear graining, and it is not the first time, given that also in 2023 the performances of the Reds were both fast and constant on a circuit, that of Las Vegas, freshly asphalted and with cold temperatures, which limited the life of the rubber in the same way. The clues that Sainz could have anyway fight on equal termsor almost, with Verstappen so I’m there.
Ferrari is the only one to have shown a progressive improvement compared to the previous car, also in relation to the opposing teams. There McLaren has grown but not in the way one might expect, retaining some limits which will continue to ballast the machine until at least 2025. The Mercedes crisis it is there for all to see. In Maranello, however, they managed to completely rethink the car without sacrificing its strong point, lap timein favor of rhythm we areas reiterated even more forcefully in Australia after the already good performances in Bahrain e Arabia Saudi. Without forgetting a new find strategic capacity that in the era pre-Vasseur was completely missing, so much so that it transformed Ferrari into a sort of joke itinerant paddock (and on the web). Nothing was wrong in Melbourne, especially in the delicate moment in which Leclerc was closed between the two McLarens.
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The gap remains significant – This doesn’t mean that Ferrari has suddenly become one candidate for the title. Il accumulated gap from Red Bull is too significant to be written off in such a short time, especially considering that a Milton Keynes they certainly didn’t make a mistake in the design of the machine. As Mario Donnini wrote on Autosprint: “Adrian New he is light years ahead of everyone […]. She not only found the right path, but she did it clearly and in a substantially uncopiable way. Because its RBRs are not at the front like the Mercedes of the Mercedes turbo-hybrid engine era, nor due to factors of obvious aerodynamics, external therefore comprehensible and highly copyable, but they are of internal fluid dynamics, hidden and, precisely for this reason, effectively uncopiable”. Other circuits will arrive, with peculiarities different from Melbourne, there will be time and opportunity to evaluate whether Red Bull has simply stumbled into un weekend no. It’s difficult to suddenly knock down a monopoly, easier to annoy him. Currently Ferrari appears to be the only one prepared to do it.