The Monegasque from Ferrari on the eve of the Miami GP: “Almost all the teams will bring important updates. We are going in the right direction without having excessive reactions”
Everything is still possible. The Mercedes drivers repeat it, dominant in the first three Grands Prix of the season but convinced (or perhaps the attempt is to convince the others) that the cards of this World Championship are still to be revealed. Certainties similar to those of Cavallino’s opponents who, a few meters away on the large field of the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami transformed into a paddock for the weekend, use the same words to present the fourth race weekend of the championship.
updates
—
The red car that will take to the track tomorrow will be a car that has been heavily revised from an aerodynamic point of view after the long development work carried out by the Maranello team in April: “It will be very interesting to see where we are with the new developments – Charles Leclerc explained in Miami – because almost all the teams will bring important updates and it will be like seeing real cars in some cases, and this could change the balance”. In a season of discovery and development like the one that has just begun, every important package can in fact represent a change of strength from a World Championship perspective, where Ferrari is currently second behind Mercedes and ahead of McLaren: “Norris and Piastri were very close to us in the last race weekend – explained the Monegasque – so an update could have a big impact. As far as Mercedes is concerned, however, it will be difficult, considering the advantage from which they started”.
changes
—
What doesn’t worry the Ferrari drivers, on a sporting level, are the changes made in qualifying and the race by the FIA to meet the requests of teams and drivers after the first GPs with the new regulations: “We are going in the right direction without having excessive reactions – explained Leclerc – the change to starts for example will not affect our ‘advantage’ at the start and the excellent starts we have had so far, it will only be a help for those who start very badly in order not to create stall situations for the dangerous cars”. The Federation’s work has therefore satisfied Leclerc, who looks forward to the rest of the championship with confidence: “I felt listened to as a driver in the requests and advice we gave. Normally we drivers are programmed to look only at performance, but this time we put it aside to make these cars look like real Formula 1 cars again, especially in qualifying where we were most critical. There were software filters, bizarre behaviors whereby if you went to the floor and then lifted your foot something different from what would happen would happen. you wanted. Now it has been resolved and we can go back to driving with instinct, although obviously there will be more work to do during the season.”
rain
—
However, a big question mark regarding these cars remains linked to their behavior in the wet, a condition on which changes have already been made by the FIA but on which there has been no effective feedback on the track. A condition that could come on Sunday, in view of a Grand Prix that promises to be in wet conditions: “The strange thing about these cars is that in the wet you risk reaching the end of the straight at a higher speed than in the dry, because you don’t have the engine cut-off that you would have in other conditions, given that the batteries don’t use the same energy in the wet. You find yourself in complicated situations with zero visibility, at full speed, just hoping that those in front of you aren’t slower than you or that there aren’t any problems. Before, it was relatively easy to understand certain things, but now we drivers become passengers, it’s not a question of courage. The hope is that the small changes made during the break will be enough, but only time will tell us if we have done enough.” On possible postponements of the match in stormy conditions which would put its feasibility at risk, the Monegasque did not rule out various options: “I didn’t know about possible time changes, if the situation is bad they will decide what to do as it has always been done”.
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
