Like McLaren, the team it was ultimately defeated by, Ferrari has come a long way over the past 18 months. But the Italian squad fell just short of conquering the 2024 constructors’ title after keeping its chances alive until the very end.
Ferrari was the only team to prevent Red Bull from a clean sweep in 2023, with Carlos Sainz taking a cunning victory in Singapore. But the huge discrepancy between its one-lap and race day performance left the team unsure of where it would stack up in 2024 and how much it had solved its tyre overheating issues.
It was therefore a pleasant surprise when Ferrari appeared in the mix from the start of 2024, albeit behind Red Bull on pace. But little did the team know it wasn’t Red Bull it should have been worried about, but McLaren, which started the season off the pace but made a huge step from May’s Miami Grand Prix onwards.
McLaren soon overhauled Ferrari in the constructors’, and while the Scuderia mounted a late fightback, four key moments ended up giving it too much work to do to catch up.
Canada: Ferrari’s only double retirement
Carlos Sainz, Ferrari SF-24, cuts a corner
Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Motorsport Images
Ferrari suffered its first double retirement in two years with a horror weekend in Canada, in which a spate of issues derailed its weekend. Both Charles Leclerc and Sainz were dumped out of Q2 after they couldn’t find late improvements on old soft tyres, with the pair starting from 11th and 12th.
Ferrari’s weekend went from bad to worse in the race, with Leclerc retiring due to an electronical issue on the power unit while Sainz spun out in wet conditions, collecting Williams’ Alex Albon. It prompted team boss Fred Vasseur to say Ferrari “had all the issues in the world” in Montreal.
Spain: Flawed new floor sends Ferrari down a development rabbit hole
Charles Leclerc, Ferrari SF-24
Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images
Ferrari was keen to bounce back after Canada on the triple-header of Barcelona, Spielberg and Silverstone, but a new floor launched at the Spanish Grand Prix turned out to introduce bouncing in high-speed corners. That not only cost it performance outright but also derailed its development programme as the Maranello squad first had to find and understand the root cause before it could come up with a tweaked design.
The team was forced into back-to-back testing at Silverstone and into making set-up sacrifices to work its way out of its hole,…
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