Ferrari’s ground-breaking Formula 1 rear wing, which rotates 180 degrees, returned at the Chinese Grand Prix – but the experiment was short-lived.
The wing, which was first seen in action during pre-season testing, was trialled by both Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton in the only free practice session of the Shanghai weekend. This featured a spin from Hamilton, when the wing closed coming into the Turn 6 braking zone – “brakes locked up,” he summarised on the radio.
The Scuderia eventually returned to its more conventional, Melbourne-spec rear wing in sprint qualifying.
“I don’t really know why we went back on it,” Hamilton commented. “I think we rushed it to get it here and it was not supposed to be on the cards until I think it was race four or five or something like that. So they did a great job to rush it here.
“We only had two of them and it was maybe a little bit premature. So we took it off. The car was still great and we’ll work to try and bring it back when it’s ready.”
Autosport understands Ferrari was satisfied with the wing’s performance relative to its conventional version and encouraged by its reliability, but decided it didn’t have enough guarantees to take the risk of running it during a whole race.
Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari
Photo by: Guido De Bortoli / LAT Images via Getty Images
The fact that the wing still wouldn’t bring enough performance to be a game changer made the decision easier.
The Scuderia will now run further analysis back in Maranello ahead of the upcoming Japanese GP, in two weeks’ time.
Hamilton and Leclerc qualified in fourth and sixth, with the seven-time world champion 0.641s slower than polesitter George Russell and the Monegasque a further 0.367s adrift. That gap was down to Leclerc being hampered by an unspecified issue on the back straight, which the team will investigate further – team boss Fred Vasseur explained “he didn’t have the same deployment as the lap before”.
“My team did a really great job,” Hamilton commented. “My engineers did a fantastic job to turn the car around, because in P1 it was a tricky session with that spin and the car generally felt great. It’s just we’re losing, I think it is on the straights, it’s a lot of time to be losing.
“So we have a lot of work to do. We really have to push so hard back in Maranello to improve on power. It was something that I think we were conscious of last year that we thought that Mercedes started earlier than us or the rest, which they did last time as well. So they’ve done a fantastic job and we’ve got to step up. We’ve got to push to be able to close that gap.
“I think car-wise, the car feels great, I think we can compete with them through corners. But when you’re down on power, it’s just the way it is.”
Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari
Photo by: Lintao Zhang / LAT Images via Getty Images
Leclerc, who insisted the innovative rear wing “doesn’t really change the picture from where we are”, expects to be stronger in the race but corroborated Hamilton’s analysis regarding Mercedes’ dominance.
“In qualifying, for some reason, the Mercedes power unit finds a lot of lap time. We don’t quite find that amount of lap time just yet in qualifying, but in the race we are closer. So I’m still hopeful we can come back tomorrow,” he concluded.
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– The Autosport.com Team
