Why Ferrari reverted to Imola-spec F1 upgrades at Silverstone

Ferrari duo Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz had their Formula 1 cars dialled back to their Imola-spec parts as the Italian squad hoped to find an answer to its recent performance problems.

The team had introduced two larger-scale upgrade packages this season: one at Imola, and the other at Barcelona, as it sought to maintain a regular cadence of adding performance to the car. The Imola upgrades appeared to work out for the most part and allowed Ferrari not only to keep pace with the front-runners, but to win the Monaco Grand Prix.

A small drop-off at the Canadian Grand Prix, when Ferrari was wrong-footed by the conditions in Montreal, preceded the introduction of the Spain package – a collection of modifications to the floor, diffuser and bodywork to move the game on from the Imola upgrades.

However, the grand prix appeared to expose and exacerbate an issue that Ferrari had faced with bouncing; although the SF-24 seemed to produce the problem to a small degree, the Spain upgrades made it particularly irksome as it seemed to carry through the high-speed corners.

Prior to the weekend, Sainz stated: “Bouncing 100% costs you time. What I think is that it costs you even more time than what you think. And not only the time that you lose by the bouncing in a high speed corner, but also the potential time that you might lose in other corners that you’re not bouncing by the fact of having bouncing in a 6g high speed corner.”

In short, exposing the tyres to the cyclical loading of bouncing can create variance in grip, and so the tyres are more prone to overheating or sliding.

In an effort to uncover the root cause, Ferrari has returned the car to the state it was in during the Imola weekend. The team initially split its cars, Sainz with a presumed full reversion from FP1 onwards, and Leclerc taking the Imola spec for Saturday’s sessions. This handed Ferrari the data it needed from running in split specs.

This, the drivers say, has helped reduce some of the bouncing produced by the car as the floor builds downforce – although it still remains present.

“We’ve lost some performance since Monaco, as a matter of fact,” Leclerc said. “We are looking into it. That’s also why we are doing all these tests.

“We came to the conclusion that it was the right choice to come back for this weekend, mostly because of bouncing. We’ll take the right decision for the…