At the penultimate round of the 2024 Formula 1 season, the Qatar Grand Prix, Ferrari have had a slow start to the weekend.
Can Ferrari turn their weekend around halfway through?
The Drivers’ World Championship title was won by Max Verstappen in Las Vegas after he finished in P5. However, the Constructors’ title is still up for grabs.
Ferrari, McLaren and Red Bull are vying for the victors’ trophy, but the latter is most likely to lose out. Going into the penultimate race of the 2024 season, McLaren can win it. Not unless Ferrari have a say in it though.
Free Practice and Sprint Qualifying having already taken place in Qatar. And unfortunately for the Tifosi, Ferrari are not looking nearly as strong as McLaren.
Ferrari’s Free Practice in Qatar
As already stated by Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur in some of the previous races, Ferrari has decided to stop with the updates they will no longer be bringing upgrades.
This is to allow the team to already be able to work focus on next year’s project.
And still, with no upgrades, during free practice in Qatar, Ferrari demonstrated an excellent pace, giving good hope to the entire team.
In fact, at the end of Free Practice, Charles Leclerc placed first with a time of 1:21.953 while Carlos Sainz obtained fourth place.
Sprint Qualifying
On the high of positive Free Practice results, following a disappointing But with the Sprint qualifying session, this hope quickly vanished.
Some problems were highlighted that made the race difficult for both Ferrari drivers. Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz were unable to confirm what had been seen during the free practice sessions.
Having to settle for fourth and fifth places on the grid, both drivers suffered from various problems. Among these was the understeer problem and the poor balance of the car that was accentuated even more with the Soft tyres.
In addition to this, a bit of graining was also seen during the final phase of qualifying.
With these Sprint qualifications, the 3–tenths gap to McLaren that had been glimpsed during the simulations was also confirmed.
It was a bittersweet qualification for Ferrari, which was forced to face an unexpected reality. And above all, problems that they will probably find themselves having in the race as well.
What to expect from this Ferrari?
During the Sprint qualifying, highlighted issues for Ferrari included understeer and poor balance of the single-seater. The Maranello team will be working to stem these issues before the Sprint race, and qualifying for the main race.
The Qatar circuit is quite complex. It is important to have a car that is balanced enough to be able to tackle the various corners.
Ferrari will therefore have to fight against time to try to fix a car that is acting up.
It will also be important for them to find good strategies and try to maximize what they have.
But nothing is lost, anything can happen in F1, and this means that in the race they could recover what they have not managed to achieve so far.
