Towards the end of the sprint race the Ferraris were getting closer to Verstappen. The performance of the RB18 in Austria was largely affected by tyre degradation, with Verstappen complaining of constant changes in the balance of his car, initially understeering and then becoming more and more oversteery as the rear tyres lost grip. Red Bull also continues to introduce upgrades at each GP and is changing its aerodynamic concept compared to the beginning of the year. Red Bull still has some problems on this front, but less serious and worrying than those of Ferrari.įor Austria, Red Bull had instead eliminated the terminal part of the fin of the engine cover, creating a slot to drain the heat coming from the heat exchanger located in the upper part of the Honda power unit. The cooling openings on the sides of the F1-75 in Austria had been widened in order to avoid overheating.įerrari recognises it will be difficult to finish the season without having to take two more new power units for Leclerc and Sainz. This certainly detracted from heat dissipation given it has such a small opening around the exhaust. In Austria, Ferrari again used the more closed engine cover introduced at Silverstone to reduce drag. But Binotto has so far been vague on this, even though it’s clear Ferrari has problems in this area. It is almost certain that Sainz will have to take a penalty at this weekend’s French Grand Prix for using a fourth power unit. We don’t know exactly what happened to Sainz’s V6, but Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto suggested it was likely similar to the failure Leclerc suffered in Baku. Austria was a very demanding grand prix for engine cooling due to the less dense air at altitude. What Ferrari lacks is only the reliability of the power unit. In addition to the rear wing introduced in Canada and later used in both Silverstone and Austria, Ferrari has tried to reduce drag by slightly increasing the undercut in the underside of the sidepods in a package introduced at Silverstone. But Ferrari has largely stuck with its concept and has only brought in some small changes to reduce drag with updates. The development paths taken by Ferrari and Red Bull remain very different, in some ways even opposite. This is indicative of how much the Ferrari F1-75 has improved in this area. Leclerc managed to overtake Verstappen three times in Austria, and the champion was never able to fight back against the Ferrari despite having DRS. Since the Spanish GP, Ferrari has improved its straightline speed thanks to the new design concept of rear wings with a DRS that has less drag when open. However, Ferrari has again shown that the straightline speed disadvantage that existed at the beginning of the year compared to Red Bull has been practically cancelled out. The Austrian venue was expected to be much more favourable to the Red Bull due to the prevalence of straights, especially in the first sector.
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