Does Leclerc deal mean Ferrari is losing faith in Vettel?

Is Leclerc's promotion to Ferrari a sign it's losing faith in Sebastian Vettel's ability to deliver a title? If he's as good as is believed, and he knows it, it's hard to imagine Leclerc playing a better second fiddle to Vettel than Raikkonen has for too long. Could this end up like Ricciardo/Vettel in 2014?
Umar Ahmed, via email

Consider that Ferrari had Fernando Alonso driving for it for five years and now Sebastian Vettel for four seasons. Between them they've won six world championships, but with Ferrari neither won a single one.

This means Ferrari has to take a high percentage of the blame for those failures, especially during the Alonso years. This year it's running at about 50/50 between Vettel and Ferrari in terms of responsibility, but I'm pretty sure frustration at Maranello must be about boiling over.

I think Ferrari has decided it needs to take charge of its own destiny. I'm not saying that is correct, but by bringing in Charles Leclerc now the management will be hoping it will have someone very capable of taking over when Vettel wants to move on, renegotiate his contract or, more likely, hang up his helmet.

Vettel will remember what happened in 2014 when Daniel Ricciardo joined the Red Bull team and he will probably have a few nightmares about it all happening again. But there is no reason why the Vettel/Leclerc relationship on track cannot be as productive as the Vettel/Kimi Raikkonen relationship.

It's just that the new boy in town is coming at it from a different direction, that of a driver on the up, but he is clever enough to realise that his day will come. The big question is, is he good enough? Only time will tell.

Given Simone Resta was chief designer of last year's Ferrari and is now technical director at Sauber, could Sauber possibly interfere with the top three in races for possible podiums next year?
@Vernboy75, via Twitter

It's unlikely that this sort of result will happen that quickly. He is only one part of the equation and the team needs time to build up its design and engineering structure.

With Raikkonen joining Sauber, I'm pretty sure that will help the team bring in some high quality engineers. Kimi is a very likeable driver and he gives his all every time he sits in the car. Signing him means the commitment from the team is there, and being best of the rest would be a fine achievement.

We've seen a very big gap between the big three teams and the rest this year, but there's a very tight battle for what people are calling 'Class B', so to get to the front of that would be impressive.

All that said, we still don't really know where Honda stands as far as performance is concerned. If Honda has to start pushing the engine that bit harder to satisfy Red Bull, which after all wants performance above all else, then reliability problems can very easily rear their ugly heads.

That could very easily open the top six door to whoever is best of the rest. If that's Sauber, then maybe a few podiums could be possible. But to get them consistently will require a good amount of bad luck for those at the front.

When designing an F1 car, does it start with an aero concept and is built around that or a chassis/mechanical concept first? Explain the challenges between the engineers during this design process.
Kenny Geauvreau, via Twitter

Initially the two go hand-in-hand. The big parts - the engine, the gearbox, the fuel tank and the survival cell - all need to be located so you can define the car's centre of gravity. Then the aerodynamics take over and they rule the roost.

Every internal and external body surface - in fact any surface that's touched by the airflow, including the suspension members - is optimised by the aerodynamicists.

There will be many discussions, some of them heated, on how the mechanical packaging needs to be altered to suit the aerodynamics. On many occasions this has led teams down the wrong path because cooling is one area that if you compromise on, you end up with better aerodynamic figures. But when you get to the first hot race, you realise those figures were a bit too ambitious.

Overall, discounting the engine package, the aerodynamics are the prime mover for the performance of the car. The mechanical side needs to be bulletproof, or it will let you down.

Why is running a third car not really an 'option'? Personally I think it'd be great for young drivers.
@CarbonGFX, via Twitter

I also think it would be great for young drivers. But to do it properly, all teams would need to be in a position to do it, or those that didn't would lose out on TV time. After all, that's what the sponsor pays the money for.

If it was only those who could afford it, that would be the big teams who currently have the best budgets and the fastest cars. So again, the smaller, less well-funded teams would be finishing further down the field.

Even if the young drivers didn't score points, it would mean that the smaller teams would be embroiled in more on-track battles that could very easily end up with more damaged cars and, in turn, fewer points.

It would be a huge expense for some teams that are already struggling with budget, so it's very difficult to justify until F1 finds some way to stabilise itself and get more manufacturer interest and more teams.

Would it ever be possible to get to 0% downforce loss following another car instead of 20% that is aimed for in 2021? What do LMPs or F2 or Indycars lose in comparison?
@BSAA77, via Twitter

When you have an aerodynamic package that's producing lift or, in a car's case, downforce, it will always lose some of it when it gets in a low-pressure pocket of air behind another car, then on top of that you have the turbulence created by the leading car.

I'm sure you've flown in an aeroplane when it's hit turbulence and the plane has started bouncing around. It has also lost some of its lift and if you listen, the engines probably increase in power output. The wing angle will also have been altered to increase the lift, so the plane keeps supporting its own weight, flying at the same speed but still bouncing around.

On an F1 car, those changes are not possible so you lose overall downforce. But more importantly, because of the very complex front wings the cars lose front downforce so they start to understeer more.

When this happens, the driver can do nothing but back off until he gets some front grip. We see it many times when one driver understeers into another when they're running close together - Vettel at Paul Ricard when he ran into Valtteri Bottas is a prime example.

Losing 20% is just a number in space. What F1 needs to address is where that is lost from and how the new regulations can address the loss of front downforce.

If F1 can come up with something that keeps the car reasonably balanced, then the loss of overall downforce is not such a big problem.

Formula 2 and IndyCar have less complicated front wings, which are not so critical to turbulent airflow. So that's a good place to start. LMP cars have closed wheels so do not generate so much turbulence. They still lose overall downforce, but the balance stays more consistent.

Do you know why Pirelli brings very soft tyres to tracks like Singapore and Monaco? Everyone always chooses a one-stop strategy at these tracks. Therefore soft, fragile tyres surely just mean slow driving, no mistakes and no excitement. Does Pirelli have the freedom to change this, or does the FIA need to give Pirelli different objectives for these tracks?
Phil Bishop, via email

The softer tyres give more mechanical grip and on slow-speed tracks like Monaco and Singapore that's what the teams and drivers want, especially for qualifying. Yes, Pirelli could bring any of its compounds and as long as it was the same for everyone then we would still have a race of sorts. But for me, it's the qualifying that spoils the show - especially on these track where overtaking is more or less impossible.

F1 has been applying sticking plasters for far too long and refuelling was one of them. It meant that there was a chance to overtake another car because of differing strategy, but most of these overtakes happened in the pits.

Then it was, and unfortunately still is, the dreaded DRS. Now that is being extended on most tracks to make that sort of overtaking even easier. Unfortunately, or in my opinion fortunately, it doesn't work so well on the slower tracks.

One thing that did stand out in Singapore was how the lack of driver reaction to blue flags meant that the quick boys didn't have it all their own way. It wasn't just about going out for a Sunday afternoon drive knowing that if you don't make any mistakes, the results should be the same as what the grid was.

If blue flags were done away with then drivers would have to push that bit harder to make sure they had a gap big enough to allow them to lap cars without being caught from behind.

During Singapore GP Q1, Hamilton was out on ultrasofts, and after about six laps was complaining his tyres were finished. After 12 laps in the race, on hypersofts and 100kg of fuel, he was saying that the tyres were fine. Repeatedly we've seen qualifying tyres which 'can't last two laps', yet are then pushed to 40 laps in the race. How much longer can you make tyres last at race pace compared to qualifying pace?
Matt Buck, via email

This answer is connected to the one above. In qualifying, you are giving it everything and that is very difficult for the tyres. What Lewis Hamilton was complaining about was that they had lost their edge and the traction required for qualifying just wasn't there.

In the race, it's a different case. The 100kg fuel adds up to around three-seconds-per-lap deficit; the engine is downtuned a little bit, but I wouldn't expect that to be much more than another second.

At most circuits, the first 10 laps of the race are around seven seconds slower than qualifying. In Singapore, it was actually around 12s slower.

All this extra time loss is under braking and cornering, so it gives the tyres a much easier time and allows the driver to go further. As long as everyone is in the same boat, then it doesn't matter. But there is a simple answer to all this: two tyre companies fighting it out.

What is going on with Ferrari constantly covering up the camera with umbrellas and cooling packs and suchlike? Surely they are hiding something they shouldn't be doing? Why is this allowed?
Dan Williams, via email

Putting a damp rag on top of the rollover-bar camera isn't exactly high-tech, and changing it to a cooling fan is a little more in line with F1, but everyone blows air through the inlet ducts to stabilise the internal temperatures. Why not Ferrari?

I can't really think of anything that it could do that would be of interest to anyone. If it is, as most think, to cover up something on the steering wheel, then the minute the car leaves the garage or the grid the cover is off so everything and anything can be seen.

The other way of looking at it is that if you are doing something trick, then do something more obvious somewhere else! That usually distracts everyone's attention and they miss what's really going on.

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