Ferrari with all to do, McLaren catching up on Red Bull

OBAKENG MELETSE

FORMULA One round seven will be making red waves at the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix in Imola this weekend. Ferrari, under pressure from McLaren who have made giant strides to the top of the charts, have it all to do with their red army in heavy presence.

The Scuderia Ferrari-24 had upgrades coming into the weekend, and following a somewhat decent but difficult weekend at the Miami International Circuit where both Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz finished third and fifth respectively, their improved car should see them right back in the picture.

More disappointing for Ferrari would be seeing Max Verstappen beaten on pure pace by a McLaren team they had an edge over for most parts of last season and the early part of the 2024 season. Lando Norris’ maiden F1 win had long threatened to come, but with a rocket travelling in four wheels that RedBull Racing have enjoyed for the last three years, and some small obstacles along the way, his first time truly felt special.

The win however left a couple of question marks – are McLaren now good enough to take it to RedBull? Or have they now overtaken Ferrari as the second best team? Is somebody finally closing the gap to RedBull and their dominance in the last three years?

One race is probably not enough to judge everything but the fact that Verstappen couldn’t overtake a car with a decent amount of laps left in the race, leaves a lot to ponder but it’s certain that teams are starting to catch up.

Ferrari will feel fairly confident heading to their home race and will hope upgrades to their SF24 have immediate impact. They head into the weekend with a 63-point gap to McLaren and outgoing Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz, speaking during the driver press conference, was happy to be back in Italy and believes upgrades are track-dependent.

“It cannot get better, you’re a Ferrari driver in Imola, with hopefully a bit of a step coming this weekend, life’s good, I can’t complain.

“Miami was a track best suited to our car and we had really good pace, even though McLaren and Redbull were half a step in front, our car felt back to normal, while in China in particular it didn’t feel good, so I think we are going to be track-dependent and hopefully Imola is one of those good tracks for us and we can put on a good show for the crowd.

“We will need to keep developing for tracks like China (Shanghai International Circuit) because there’s certain types of corners where our car struggles right now and we need to keep moving forward in that sense.”

Sainz will be replaced by seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton next season, but he is yet to confirm his next destination with Mercedes heavily rumoured to land the 29-year-old Spanish driver’s signature.