Speed and “sweetness” with the tires of the SF-24, ferocious motivations of Leclerc and Sainz who start from different points of view, the Horner case in Red Bull. What if the first GP wasn’t already written?
– Milan
The 2024 F1 World Championship starts on March 2 with the Bahrain GP, on the same track where the only “real” pre-season tests with the 2024 cars ended on February 23. To avoid any misunderstanding: yes, Max Verstappen is the big favorite for the title (or to put it ironically by Fernando Alonso, “nineteen drivers already know that they will not win the World Championship”). But sport is the sublimation of uncertainty, even in Formula 1, the sport where technology, numbers, performance and stopwatch leave little room for theatrical coups. But with a week to go there are several reasons why seeing Ferrari ahead of everyone in the first race of the year might not just be the obstinacy of a fundamentalist fanatic. Let’s try to list them.
Ferrari speed
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Has a slow car ever won in Formula 1? Negative. So, let’s start with the raw material. The SF-24 showed, if not flattering, then highly competitive times in the three days of Sakhir. And, note, both Leclerc and the outgoing Sainz were fast. How do you say? Was Verstappen faster? Oh yes, the three-time world champion played time when he wanted and more or less hid when he deemed it necessary. But in the meantime the machine is there, and the difference between RB20 and SF-24 is not (ok, it doesn’t seem like it…) one second but two/three tenths. It’s a concrete gap but it’s not like crossing the ocean with a rowing boat.
Ferrari behavior
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Speed aside – that remains conditio sine qua non – there is a quality of the new Ferrari, underlined by Leclerc and Sainz, which goes hand in hand with what team principal Vasseur said last summer: “The 2024 car will mark a break with the previous one”. As the pilots asked, although from different points of view, the SF-24 is very drivable and does not eat the tires. Degradation should no longer be the definitive obstacle that condemned every single time trial performance of the reds in 2023 (especially of the more talented Leclerc). Although Verstappen showed the best pace at the distance of his Red Bull – we emphasize him, because for the now dull and unmotivated Perez it is a completely different story – Ferrari can play it, and this is not science fiction.
Ferrari’s motivations
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Having said that Max Verstappen is a champion of competitive ferocity, Leclerc and Sainz have a boost psychologically stronger than ever at the moment. In 2022 the victories in Bahrain and Australia were galvanizing and somewhat surprising, but faced with the Dutchman’s comeback they produced almost the opposite effect on the team, especially after the strategic mess of the Monaco GP. But at the start of the 2024 World Championship the relationships are reversed: Red Bull has everything to lose, Ferrari – from the drivers’ point of view – almost nothing. Charles has “the contract” on his side, he has an atavistic hunger to emerge (maybe too the little Prince but he has the soul of a Lancelot) and he has a mad desire, a fever, to say to the Man who will come: “Sir Lewis Hamilton, you may have won 7 World Cups but I won’t shy away”. Carlos took a symbolic but equally painful slap to the heart when he learned that Ferrari had hired Hamilton from 2025, but perjove he’s not joking at all when he says he will fight like hell in 2024: for the professionalism he has always had – at every latitude – and to earn a team of a certain consistency from next year. This is petrol: different from the one they put in the tanks but equally capable of igniting the spark. So, Max is warned.
ferrari vs red bull
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The Ferrari drivers appeared smiling in the tests. Leclerc and Sainz are rivals, as is obvious, but also accomplices when it is intelligent to be (i.e. always except inside the cars on the track). Verstappen contributed significantly to the “demolition” of his teammate Perez: partly due to natural selection due to results, partly due to nature. Shifting your gaze slightly: Vasseur cannot sleep peacefully because no one who works at Ferrari can do so, due to the vocation of the most legendary company in the history of motorsport, but he is a manager firmly in command of the team and fully legitimized by results and ownership; Horner is a champion of sports management but with his back against the wall due to the affair of inappropriate behavior towards a Red Bull employee, so if not already with the dismissal notice in hand, certainly delegitimized and under pressure at the hands of the same company that gave him pays the salary. In light of what we saw on the track, there do not appear to be any consequences on the performance of the RB20 compared to the SF-24. But in the long run?
the Ferrari on the flying lap
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Let’s try a simulation, since in F1 everything is largely simulated before the verdict of the track. Bahrain weekend, Leclerc (less likely Sainz) finds total alchemy on the flying lap and gets ahead of Verstappen: ok Max hammered out an impressive series of 17 top laps on the race pace in the tests, detecting deviations of a tenth at most at the juncture. But then in the race it’s not like in the tests. Do you remember 2022?
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