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Ferrari is determined to take valuable lessons from the disappointment of having both its cars disqualified at the Chinese Grand Prix, as the team looks ahead to closing the gap to McLaren. Charles Leclerc has acknowledged the team’s costly mistakes and emphasized the importance of refining their approach to avoid a repeat scenario.
Although Lewis Hamilton secured victory in the Shanghai sprint race, Ferrari sees that result as an outlier rather than a true representation of their current form. Instead, their race-day performance, where Leclerc and Hamilton started fifth and sixth and were later overtaken by Max Verstappen, is a more accurate indicator of where they stand. Post-race, both Ferrari cars faced disqualification—Leclerc for being marginally underweight and Hamilton due to illegal skid plank wear.
“Obviously whenever you do mistakes you learn from them, especially when they’re costing that much,” Leclerc stated in the pre-race press conference at Suzuka. “Everybody is playing with the limit and trying to be as close as possible to it, but to have both cars underneath [i.e. beyond] it was a big pain, and at the end of the day we didn’t need that.”
Margins Matter in Formula 1
Ferrari’s disqualification in China was a stark reminder of how fine the margins are in Formula 1. Teams constantly push their cars to the absolute limit to extract maximum performance, but sometimes, as seen in Shanghai, the risk backfires.
Whether Red Bull reminded Verstappen to do this or not, it’s an example of the kind of fine margins that make the difference. In Leclerc’s case, his car was just 1kg underweight, highlighting how Ferrari might have prevented the disqualification with minor adjustments.
“I’m confident that we’ll learn from it,” Leclerc said. “Obviously when events like this happen, we try to understand and analyse where it went wrong, and change a little bit the process. It was a multitude of things adding up which meant the margin we had wasn’t big enough.”
Chasing McLaren’s Pace
Beyond the disqualification woes, Ferrari’s primary challenge remains closing the performance gap to McLaren. While Red Bull continues to lead the pack, McLaren has emerged as a formidable contender, leaving Ferrari trailing in a fluctuating battle with Mercedes.
“It’s as difficult as always – it’s always tricky to extract maximum performance from a car,” Leclerc explained. “I don’t think it’s any more difficult in a season like this.
“It’s just that the performance compared with McLaren specifically is just not good enough. So it’s not about how hard it is to extract the maximum performance out of the car, it’s just that there’s not enough performance in the car for now. But little step by little step I’m sure we can close that gap – starting from this weekend, hopefully.”
Looking Ahead to Suzuka
Ferrari, like all teams, is still in the process of fully understanding its 2024 car. While developments are ongoing, major upgrades take time to implement. In the meantime, results will continue to fluctuate based on track layouts, weather conditions, and race strategy.
“We saw a big step on Saturday [in China], in the sprint race with Lewis especially,” said Leclerc. “On Sunday I think it was back to normal.
“[This weekend] I expect us to be more in line with China on the Sunday than in Melbourne.”
With Suzuka’s high-speed nature set to offer a fresh challenge, Ferrari will be keen to move past their Chinese Grand Prix misfortunes and take steps towards re-establishing themselves as consistent frontrunners.
