Charles Leclerc insists Ferrari has made genuine progress on the development front this season, but its advancements have been blunted by the return of a familiar foe for the Scuderia: bouncing.
The Italian outfit introduced a significant upgrade last June at the Spanish Grand Prix, a package that included among other adjustments changes to the SF24’s floor body and floor edge.
While the array of tweaks delivered undeniable aerodynamic improvements, it also significantly amplified what was up to then only a mild bouncing issue suffered by Ferrari’s drivers, mainly in high-speed corners.
This subsequent instability made the car unpredictable and forced Leclerc to adopt a more cautious driving style. In the interim, Ferrari introduced for Hungary and Belgium a revised underbody that aimed to mitigate its car’s bouncing phenomenon.
"From Spain onwards, I think this was more the turning point where we brought something on the car, which the numbers, as I've always said, were there," Leclerc told Motorsport.com.
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However, the Monegasque went on to detail the downside to the changes.
"It induced quite a lot of bouncing that we've been struggling with. And on my side, specifically, I went very aggressive in the last four races with set-up, especially, trying to find solutions for that.
"I've always been [aiming] to go for the last hundredths, and I think this is the approach that pays off whenever things are as they should be.
"Whenever you have a car, that is bouncing, by example, you cannot go too close to the limit because the car is doing more unpredictable things, and you've got to keep more margin.
©Ferrari
"Which is something that I know I'm a bit... yes, it's not my approach, and so always, I'm going to pay a little bit more of the price whenever these things happen.
"However, I don't think that this was the main issue in the last few races. It was more about putting the car in very extreme places in order to get something out of it and to understand and that was the main reason of the lack of performance of the last few races.
"I will put that mostly on bouncing. The bouncing is what created the inconsistencies that we have seen in the last few races and made us struggle a bit more than before that."
The situation seems eerily similar to Ferrari's approach in 2023. Back then, the team sacrificed short-term results to prioritize development for the latter half of the season.
But a breakthrough with a new floor at the Dutch Grand Prix proved to be a turning point, leading to a strong run in the back half of the 2023 season.
©Ferrari
Leclerc sees parallels: "I remember last year we had two races like that, and it started in Zandvoort where we decided, okay, maybe Zandvoort is not going to be the race for us, but we want to learn as much as possible in order to get better after that.
"And I'm sure that this is the same process we have gone through in the last three, four races. However, the negative point about it is that we've lost three, four races instead of two last year.
"But I believe that that gave us a much deeper understanding of what was happening, and I'm confident to say that we've learned a lot."
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