How Ferrari has disrupted F1’s McLaren vs Red Bull battle

Amid all the attention on the fight between McLaren and Red Bull, Ferrari has quietly snuck into the 2024 Formula 1 title fight. How did the Scuderia make it a three-horse race? And can it pull it off?

Ferrari showed a much more competitive face in 2024, pairing solid one-lap performance with much-improved long runs, which were its downfall last year. But its title hopes looked to vanish over the middle third of the season, when McLaren made a huge step forward while Ferrari suffered a rough spell of results. Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz both retired in Canada, before a floor upgrade in Barcelona led Ferrari the down the wrong path and compromised its progress.

There was a prime opportunity to capitalise on Red Bull’s wobbles, but it looked like McLaren had leapfrogged Ferrari as the team that was going to get the job done.

Fast forward three months and Ferrari is right back in the fight, having emphatically overtaken Red Bull and closed to within 29 points of McLaren. So, how did the Scuderia turn its season around so quickly?

Monza upgrades belatedly show their true potential

Other than a smaller batch in Singapore, Ferrari’s last major upgrade package came at September’s Italian Grand Prix, offering among other bits a revised floor solution to combat the dreaded high-speed corner bouncing problem. That was the main issue introduced by Ferrari’s maligned Barcelona updates that set the team back several months of development.

But before those design tweaks really showed their true benefits, Ferrari hit a run of circuits that suited its SF-24 and didn’t punish its relative weakness in high-speed corners compared to the McLaren.

Monza, won by Leclerc, was one, before the Monegasque fought – and lost – a thrilling battle with Oscar Piastri on the fast streets of Baku. Then Singapore followed, the scene of Ferrari’s only win last year and another circuit devoid of high-speed corners. But neither driver was able to qualify in position, giving Lando Norris a clear run to victory while struggling to make a huge amount of progress from the fifth row of the grid.

“I was a bit frustrated after Singapore, because I had the feeling that the pace was there,” team boss Fred Vasseur said. “We were able to fight for pole but we didn’t execute the weekend pretty well. We looked at the championship and said: ‘Okay, we have to do a better job in the next two…