Ferrari is working on an upgrade to its 2024 to try and resolve the bouncing issue that has surfaced since a package introduced at the Spanish Grand Prix.
The previous major upgrade package introduced by Ferrari at Imola provided a step forward that allowed it to be in the mix for victory at the following two races, with Charles Leclerc winning from pole position in Monaco. However, a further update in Spain has led to problems with bouncing that are impacting performance, and while Vasseur is confident the team has identified the cause, he believes new parts will be needed to address it.
“[It’s] an aero problem, yes, because we changed only aero parts and the bouncing appeared in Spain,” Vasseur said. “To fix it, you have tons of solutions. You have solutions with a compromise on performance. You have solutions without compromise on performance, developing new packages… [and] I think we are there now.
“We’ll have to deal perhaps next race with the current car, and the sooner the better, we’ll bring an upgrade with less bouncing.”
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Ferrari could revert to its pre-Barcelona specification of car for this weekend’s Hungarian Grand Prix, but Vasseur says he has no concerns about the team’s wind tunnel correlation despite the latest obstacle.
“Correlation is OK. The correlation on the downforce is OK,” he said. “I think it’s still a question mark for everybody, that sometimes the bouncing is popping up like this.”
“It’s quite difficult to have a correlation because you don’t have the bouncing in the wind tunnel. I don’t want to go deep in detail, but we all have metrics. You can anticipate that you will have more bouncing with this part with another one, but to know if it will have a negative impact on the performance, it’s another story.”
Vasseur feels the latest setback should not overshadow an area that he believes has been a strength of Ferrari’s since he took over as team principal.
“The last 16 months now, all the upgrades that we brought had a very, very good correlation with what we did in the wind tunnel,: he said. “It was, I think, one of the assets of the team over the past year, to bring some small upgrades, and each time it was paying off. This one, we had an issue, but it’s not because we had an issue once that it’s the end of the world.”