Ferrari wary of ‘next banana peel’ after finally fixing pesky SF-24 problem

Ferrari senior performance engineer Jock Clear fears the “new banana peel” could be just around the corner, despite the SF-24’s splash problems being brought under control.

The second fastest team in the first laps of F1 2024, Ferrari They were Red Bull’s main rivals as Carlos Sainz had previously won the Australian Grand Prix Charles Leclerc He was on the top step of the podium in Monaco.

Ferrari awaits ‘next banana peel’ in F1 2024

But two races later, at the Spanish Grand Prix, they introduced an upgrade that reintroduced jumping to Ferrari’s F1 car.

Returning to Imola specification five races later at Silverstone, Sainz forced Ferrari to roll back its upgrades as he revealed the full extent of the damage.

“We basically have the same car as at Imola and since everyone at Imola upgraded we probably added two tenths to the car and had to come back,” he said.

“We lost two or three months of performance gains in the wind tunnel, or the performance we could have added in those three months.”

But the Scuderia’s more recent upgrades look like steps forward, with the new floor and revised sidepods introduced at Monza, where Leclerc won. It also appears to eliminate the high-speed bounce of the SF-24.

F1 2024: Ferrari teammate head-to-head

F1 2024: Head-to-head qualifying record among teammates

F1 2024: Head-to-head race statistics between teammates

“You can never be completely confident,” Clear said. “But I think it’s a good picture of how everyone’s development ebbs and flows.

“But you probably ask the same questions (to other teams) – have you lost your way?

“After Spain we certainly didn’t feel like we had lost our way, but there were some anomalies between what was happening in the tunnel and what we saw on the track and we had to deal with that.”

“It’s just the process; “When you see an anomaly, you have to deal with it, try to understand it, and then get back on track.”

But while Ferrari may have resolved this anomaly, Clear admits another could be just around the corner.

“We have to keep our eyes open for what the next anomaly is going to be, because there will be another one because that’s the current process,” Clear explained.

“So it’s not that sometimes development works and sometimes it doesn’t: The development process is literally testing something new every week.

“We are confident that our process is working and that we are on top of things. We will wait for the next banana peel.”

Ferrari is third in the Constructors’ Championship with 441 points, only 34 points behind Red Bull, while McLaren is the leader with 516 points.