P1racenews AI automatic summary:
Suzuka chicane struggles leaves Ferrari F1 team scratching its head
The Maranello outfit had hoped that the progress it had made with its SF-24 this year would allow it to pose a proper threat to Red Bull around the high-speed swoops of Suzuka. Good progress has been made at the kind of corner speeds that are common around Suzuka, so the venue was going to be a good litmus test of how much of a step forward the team had taken. While it duly managed to cut the deficit to Red Bull from 0.665 seconds last year to 0.485 seconds now, the gains still left a sense of dissatisfaction, especially because its long run form had looked every bit a match for the championship leaders throughout practice. But perhaps key to it feeling that there was room to have done better was the fact that much of the deficit to Red Bull was not in the high-speed areas that had been a key focus. Instead, it was in the slow-speed turns where traditionally Ferrari has been so strong. Analysis of the GPS traces comparing Max Verstappen’s pole position lap and Carlos Sainz’s effort showed that the majority of the gap between the cars was in the slow-speed areas.
