Opposing approaches in Shanghai FP1: Ferrari saves tires, Red Bull collects data

Free practice sessions hard to read

We had hinted that the new sprint format opens up the possibility for very different approaches by each team, and the first free practice session confirmed this in a rather evident way. The only free practice session available to the teams and drivers at the Chinese Grand Prix saw each team adopting a completely different work program, making it almost impossible to compare performances across teams, but we can only make some evaluations based on the different approaches seen on the 5.451-kilometre Shanghai International Circuit.

Ferrari uses just one set of softs and focuses on pure performance

The Maranello team opted for the soft tire, using just one set for the entire session with both drivers. Their focus was on perfecting the setup throughout the first phase of the session by working on single-lap speed, with a series of fast laps alternated with cooling laps. Only in the final phase did both Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz attempt a short long-run simulation of 3 laps each, with respectable attack times but also a rapid degradation in performance, which however could easily be explained by the extremely worn soft tires. The Maranello team’s approach, therefore, seems to want to use the Sprint to verify long-run setups on the track, taking advantage of the open park setting in view of the race, and has undoubtedly preferred to save the highest number of new tire sets of all compounds for the rest of the weekend.

Red Bull, the opposite of Ferrari

The two leading teams of this early season could not have devised more diametrically opposite programs than what was seen on track. Red Bull started the session on medium tires with a long long-run simulation, giving the impression of wanting to perform several checks on the risk of front graining, which is very high in Shanghai with the cool temperatures of these days. However, if one might have imagined that the program would end there, at the end of the session both Sergio Perez and Max Verstappen instead mounted soft tires to proceed with single-lap speed work, with a series of fast laps alternated with the usual cooling laps. Therefore, a decidedly more comprehensive program at Red Bull, with the Milton Keynes team testing two compounds and both single-lap and long-run in fairly realistic conditions, but which will have to forgo a set of new soft tires.

Mercedes uses the hard tires but struggles, McLaren seems well-balanced

A still different work program at Mercedes, with Lewis Hamilton and George Russell engaged with only one set of hard tires, but with many laps on the track, alternating pace tests with single-lap simulations. However, the start of the weekend did not appear promising for the Brackley team, with a significant setup change immediately deliberated on George Russell’s car and a team radio from Hamilton expressing frustration, telling his track engineer Bono that the car was absolutely not good. In contrast, McLaren seemed in good shape, with evidently consistent responses between the simulations and the track, so much so that Norris did not even complete a lap that could have given him the best time, once verified that the response of the car on soft tires was as expected.

Little differentiation in work programs, performances yet to be discovered

A final note is that almost no team differentiated the work programs between the two drivers, probably accommodating a request from the drivers themselves who wanted to have all the information (and all the tires) possible on equal terms with their teammate. In any case, drawing any conclusions about the performances from this first session seems out of place. It is evident that between Ferrari and Red Bull, the former preferred an aggressive approach on the available data, with good confidence in the simulations, but conservative on the available tires, exactly the opposite of the latter. For this reason, we do not use telemetry or other data in our analysis this time, as it is decidedly unrepresentative without knowing, or in this case guessing, all the conditions with which the various cars have raced on track. The Sprint qualifying will therefore give us the first real insight into the performances.

Charles Leclerc, Ferrari SF-24