BC says: It’s not a stretch to say that a one-stop was possible. But what you have to consider is that you can’t go to the end on the hard tyre without suffering a big degradation in pace. So, if you pit earlier, you’d have to do a longer stint on the hard tyre.
It’s a bit of a coin toss, I’d say. If you’re in a position where you’re not fighting for the championship, you may as well take a risk and try and stay out longer. But if you’re in a championship fight, as Lewis is, you’d want to cover off any potential threats.
Overall, it’s a difficult one to judge. But in hindsight, you could say a one-stop was possible for Leclerc.
Ultimately, the disqualifications of Leclerc and Hamilton have thrown a spanner in the works for both drivers and their teams. It will be interesting to see how they bounce back from this setback in the upcoming races.
They didn’t know how much the hard tyre would wear, so they didn’t have an estimated mass loss for the hard tyre but they are allowed to take pick-up and they changed Leclerc’s front wing.
I don’t know where the loss in mass has come from.
Do Ferrari have a fundamental car design issue?
Interestingly, there were whispers in the paddock after Australia that Ferrari had to raise their car for the season-opener to avoid too much plank wear. While the team have not commented on the alleged issue, Hamilton being disqualified for excessive plank wear a week later has raised eyebrows.
Bernie says: It would be standard for everyone to raise the car in Australia because of the bumps and they are detrimental to downforce and plank wear.
In Australia, Ferrari were not that strong. Some of it was down to strategy but the performance in qualifying was not that strong, so maybe they have a car that’s very sensitive to ride height in terms of aero performance. All of these cars are because they’re all ground-effect cars, but maybe it is more sensitive than others.
I would be surprised that the Sprint in China was not a good enough indication that you would be illegal on plank wear.
If they have got what we would call a ‘peaky’ ride height, which means there’s a very small optimum ride height that you can have a good aerodynamic platform in, that is an issue for a car.
You want to be fit to run a range of ride heights because of all these range of tracks.