The Sprint qualifying of the Austrian Grand Prix succeeded in the difficult task of giving fairly clear verdicts on the level of the leading teams. A lap of just over a minute and just 10 corners (7 of which are real) might seem too few to have answers, but the specificity of some sections ended up highlighting some of the cars’ strengths and weaknesses in an almost glaring way, especially when looking at the data.
RedBull returns to the benchmark, closely followed by McLaren
At the Red Bull Ring, at least on a single lap, the RB20 returned to being the benchmark in terms of performance. Despite the single free practice session that should have penalized them, the Milton Keynes team was able to find the right situation quickly. The car expressed its potential, obviously masterfully driven by Verstappen, who found pole with much more ease than the hassle of all the recent races. Looking at the data it’s pretty clear why: the RB20 is the car that performs best on almost all straights and at the same time it is the one that develops grip most of all in the second part of the lap, in high-speed corners where aerodynamics and the rigid set-up are fundamental. Obviously the rigidity of the set-up forces Verstappen to take a rounder trajectory to avoid some dips, but overall the Dutchman and his car are uncatchable at turn 7 (long, fast and with a final change of direction) and at turn 9, the first of the two downhill corners at the end of the lap, which require a strong front but above all a lot of load and a perfectly balanced car. It’s only Friday’s response, but for now it’s the first weekend since China in which the car from Horner’s team gives an impression of superiority.
However, McLaren is close, with a gap behind the top teams.
Despite Verstappen’s pole and a Red Bull that appeared in form, McLaren never misses an opportunity to demonstrate how excellent its car is overall, on all tracks and in all conditions. Lando Norris stopped the clock in SQ3 less than a tenth from Verstappen, sharing the lead with the Dutchman in the corners of the second half of the lap. The MCL38 number 4 prevailed in turn 6 and in the very difficult turn 10, showing in turn load and stability, and remaining for the moment the only one in the game that counts. Yes, because the impression when looking at the numbers is that for now, on the Zeltweg track, there are RedBull and McLaren in the leading group while Mercedes and Ferrari are fighting each other but with a more marked technical gap from the top. Mercedes has with Russell, in fact, a gap of over 3 and a half tenths, which on such a short lap is notable, and Sainz, the only one to record a time of the two Ferrari drivers, even over 4 tenths. A fairly clear gap therefore that we will see if it will be repeated on the race pace or if it will remain a question of the single lap and of exploiting the peak grip of the tire entirely concentrated in such a short lap.
Ferrari definitely bad, the Barcelona updates put the SF24 in crisis
It’s hard to find a silver lining in the redhead’s day. Considering the abundant 4 tenths recovered by Sainz and the problem that occurred to Leclerc which even prevented him from completing the lap, infuriating him once again. The most worrying thing, given the data in hand, is that it is clear that the SF24 is in crisis in cornering and especially in loading curves, one of the strong points at the beginning of the season. In addition to not appearing particularly efficient (the gap also grows linearly on the straights compared to Verstappen), Sainz shows good corner entry in the violent braking sections of the circuit, but when it comes to relying on the aerodynamic load, i.e. in the medium-high speed corners and in the final sector, the car is particularly slow. The blow, for now, is one of those quite hard for the redhead: the Austrian track was supposed to be decidedly more favourable than the Spanish one, but the impression is that the package decided for the last Grand Prix, in Spain, has generated a series of problems in the set-up and optimisation of the setups, in addition to the aerodynamic bounce that appears evident, and which, just as evidently, continues to be resolved by raising the car off the ground and therefore throwing away load points and aerodynamic efficiency. It is difficult from the outside to have a precise technical indication of what is happening, but it is definitely clear that the car no longer works properly when it comes to generating downforce. We will see if using the sprint as an experiment on long runs will lead to changes in the setup for qualifying and then for the race, bringing an improvement, or if the Maranello team will be forced to another difficult weekend, with the Silverstone stage that could then become a watershed on the seasonal work. In the meantime, the Sprint looks to be at least fought between the top two, and between Mercedes and Ferrari, with Leclerc who in the meantime will try to come back, on a track where a good show is usually guaranteed. At the moment there is still no reliable reference for the race pace so we will see what the response of the short race will be to understand if what emerged in this first official session will be fully confirmed or if the scale of values will change.
