Ferrari’s tyre woes – and the explanations of Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz – have been assessed by Danica Patrick and Jenson Button.
Leclerc crashed twice last weekend before the F1 Miami Grand Prix, then finished seventh, while Sainz started P3 but ended P5.
Sky Sports experts Patrick and Button agreed that Ferrari are suffering from tyre issues but questioned what the famous Italian team have learned from their latest struggles.
“Charles said they are in a learning process,” Patrick said. “But I wonder what they are learning?
“You hear that Charles talks about understeer on one corner, then oversteer on another. “It sounds indicative of not enough grip.
“They are pushing so hard that the balance isn’t that bad.
“He said there’s a small window – there is no room for error. They are pushing as far as they can.
“There’s not enough grip. That’s why they go well on new tyres, because they are using fresh rubber.
“As soon as that goes off, they are left with a car without enough grip.”
Button added: “Charles finished 56 seconds behind Max Verstappen, who started two places behind him.
“So it’s massive, the deficit. Yes, they are good on one lap.
“On the soft tyre they aren’t bad, as soon as they put the hards on, the don’t get the tyre working. So it isn’t digging into the road, it’s just sliding.
“It overheats immediately, then the tyre just never works.
“As soon as they put it on, it was not working.
“The harder the tyre, it gets worse and worse.
“There is so much pressure on Ferrari.”
Sainz said after Miami: “We are in the middle of a learning process. This weekend will help us to understand why we can fight for pole, do a very good stint on mediums, then suddenly put the hards on, do three laps pushing the tyres, do an undercut, then this means that in the next stint you will finish 20s behind.
“We were quicker on the mediums. We need to understand why.
“It is puzzling, difficult to understand why.
“You drive on the limit, on a knife edge, and this means that we pay the price.
“You have very little flexibility because if you push one lap, you degrade. If you go for an undercut, the race is too long.
“It means we cannot play around too much with other competitors in terms of strategy. This leaves us with a lot of unknowns going into the race.”
Leclerc added: “On race day we struggle like crazy. The window of our car is so narrow.
“Whenever you get a little out, it has huge consequences on the balance.
“It’s from one corner to another. In one corner you can have huge understeer then huge oversteer.
“This is not ideal to have confidence in the car.
“Plus, I had a lot of bottoming today.
“We have a lot of work to do. We need to find something. We need solutions.”
Team principal Fred Vasseur’s reaction was: “We have positives with the quali pace. We are too inconsistent in the race.
“We have to understand why we are so up and down in the same race.
“The story today is about tyre management.”
The pressure will ramp up hugely next weekend when F1 heads to Italy, the home of Ferrari, for the first time this season.
The F1 Emilia Romagna Grand Prix could see Ferrari introduce upgrades which could result in Leclerc and Sainz having something to smile about.
If not? The Tifosi will let the iconic manufacturers know about it…
Keyword: Ferrari ‘in a learning process?’ - “But I wonder what they are learning?”