What exactly is Ferrari's problem?

Is downforce still the problem for Ferrari even after the new updates in Baku? Also why is the team generally slower than expected?
Rahul Bharadwak, via Twitter

It's not just downforce, it's a bit of everything. As Sebastian Vettel says, he still doesn't feel confident in the car so he's reluctant to push it to the limit - and Charles Leclerc paid the price in Baku qualifying for doing just that.

Downforce overpowers most of the other criteria that make up a car's performance, but it needs to be usable downforce. That is really what Vettel is saying: somewhere in the package the Ferrari has something that is creating peaky downforce that means the drivers can't rely on it.

During testing at Barcelona and during the Bahrain Grand Prix weekend, the car was working outside that too-critical aerodynamic window and it was fast. In Australia, and to a certain extent China and at least for Vettel's car in Azerbaijan, it was in the bad spot.

In Baku, Leclerc could have been at least on the front row and the fact that the car was better for both of them in the race shows that it is the aerodynamic window it is working in, mainly in qualifying, that brings out some little gremlins.

I'm not so sure that Ferrari's floor developments haven't bitten it. The treatment of the last louvre on the floor just in front of the rear tyre seems a little strange where it has an opening that goes inside the inner front corner of the rear tyre.

I think to get consistency from the diffuser, this flow should be encouraged to go outboard of the rear tyre.

The Spanish GP will be a big weekend for both Ferrari and Mercedes. It should show up who has improved or who has gone backwards. I'm pretty sure Mercedes has made a lot of progress since pre-season testing, where it wasn't far away from Ferrari anyway.

Why don't the teams reduce the amount of freight they take around the world in a bid to cut costs?
Ed Cooper, via Twitter

When you're away at a race, the last thing you need is to be short of one little component that is critical to you competing. This means everyone takes as much as possible within their budget. It's a bit of a sliding scale - the big boys will bring more than the smaller teams.

I remember in Canada in 1991 we damaged a couple of front trackrods in qualifying at Jordan and discovered that we didn't have any others with us, so panic set in. There is nothing as annoying as not being able to take part in the race just because of a screw-up.

We got one of the guys back at the factory to get a seat on Concorde, which would get him into New York early Sunday morning. He arrived in New York no problem, but the connecting flight to Montreal was delayed and he didn't arrive until the race was over.

Luckily, we didn't damage any more components so we were able to compete and in the end we scored Jordan's first Formula 1 points.

A lot of the freight will be shipped well before the race and each team gets an allocation of two cars and 'x' tonnage airfreighted as part of its prize fund and commitment to F1. So it's all managed fairly well and part of the package.

It's the extra stuff that the big teams take above and beyond the norm that really costs the money.

Just what were you doing at Barcelona testing to get such a bad read on what McLaren's performance was?
Dan Clegg, via Twitter

I'm not really sure what you're talking about even though we've had various people asking this kind of thing. This is what I wrote as my verdict on McLaren in pre-season testing:

Over the past few years, I've been fairly critical of McLaren but from what I've seen during pre-season testing I believe it has turned the corner.

The car looks good when on new tyres and pushing for a time, so I think it is being run on fairly low fuel. That said, qualifying in Melbourne is critical so it's better to go there well prepared.

When the car is on the longer runs, which require higher fuel, it's not as consistent and it looks like the rears start to go away fairly early.

New technical chief James Key joining just after the first race of the season should bring McLaren some knowledge from the outside world of how Red Bull and Toro Rosso went about their business.

Driver-wise, Carlos Sainz Jr now has lots of experience and is very capable of leading the team to a new level. Rookie Lando Norris has the speed and hopefully will have the time to get his head around what F1 is all about.

If we look at the performance after four races, we can see that McLaren is competitive in qualifying and right in there at the head of the midfield bunch.

But if you look the performance delta over Haas and Renault there is only 0.408% between them, so blink at the wrong time and you can be at the back of this bunch. That said, McLaren is still 1.64% off Mercedes.

If we then go onto the racing side of things, then 18 points from four races is the equivalent of one second place in eight attempts so not really a great haul. As I said after pre-season testing, the car didn't look as well-balanced on higher fuel.

McLaren would have wished for more, even though to be fourth is not too bad. To be 155 points behind championship leader Mercedes is not great for a team that we all want to see up there with the big boys. But at least it's a step in the right direction.

How effective is Mercedes' rear-steer suspension geometry, and does it have implications for tyre wear/warm up and ease of getting the whole package into the set-up sweet spot?
Chris Perks, via Twitter

I'm not really sure what Mercedes has done with rear-steer suspension geometry. I can only give you some indications as to what pursuing something like that might give you.

Because this toe-steer is basically rear suspension displacement-initiated, it means that if you have the rear toe-in set at X and no toe steer, the rear toe-in will stay at X all the way through its range.

If you have it set to increase toe-in as the car goes faster and the rear of the car gets lower to the ground, it will increase rear stability in high speed corners while reducing understeer in slow-speed corners.

In the past, I have had adjustable toe steer available depending on what the car's handling characteristics were. We would start the weekend with it in the neutral position and if the car, let's say, was a little nervous turning into the corners we could adjust it to give a little more toe-in to the rear.

When the car rolls on corner entry, the outside loaded wheel will also increase its toe-in. This would build up the slip angle in the tyre quicker, giving the tyre more grip earlier - which in turn would reduce the feeling that the car was going to oversteer on entry.

If the car had more of a tendency to understeer on entry then you could do the opposite, but that's fairly unlikely.

As for it helping improve the performance of the rear tyres, I don't think it will have a major influence - it is basically a tuning aid to get the best from the car balance.

It's a little tricky to get the best out of it but it is another tool in the box to help with optimising the set-up. If you have it you can use it, if not then you're behind the eight ball before you start.

How quickly could Mercedes or Ferrari implement Red Bull's front suspension compared with smaller teams?
Charles Ditman, via Facebook

The first thing any team must do is evaluate it and see whether the characteristics of its car requires something like this. I'm pretty sure most teams do something in this area in terms of optimising cambers with steering lock - and a little bit of weight transfer across the axle thrown in for good measure won't hurt.

The big thing that you need to be careful of is that any geometry change with steering angle will induce varying steering loads. You don't want these to influence the power assisted steering feeling that the driver uses as their feedback to what the car is doing or just about to do.

As far as Mercedes or Ferrari committing to something like this and getting it on the car, it would take a reasonable amount of time - perhaps a couple of months if they really felt it was the way to go.

As for a smaller team, if I was them I would research it but put it on the back burner for next year's car.

Did you have much to do with Ayrton Senna and what did you make of him as a man and a driver?
Michael Jones, via email

I never worked with Ayrton, but I have the utmost respect for him. In my opinion, he is still the man.

When he was setting the benchmark as a driver, things were a lot different to how they are today. The driver could contribute more and lift the car to a level well above its potential. On a qualifying lap, Ayrton was a master of that.

As a person, I really only knew him to say hello to. Then, when we had Rubens Barrichello driving for Jordan from 1993 he would often pop in and say hello. He was always friendly (well, except for when he smacked Eddie Irvine at Suzuka!) and on many occasions he would try to help Rubens.

I remember at Hockenheim, which used to be very high-speed and much more like Monza, he came up to the garage before qualifying and said to Rubens and me, "be in the car and ready and when I go out come out behind me and I will wait for you and give you a tow." Sure enough, when qualifying started he came down the pitlane, slowed down outside our garage, allowed us to get going and Rubens followed him out.

Not many of our current heroes would do that for a young driver finding his way in F1.

Why are Formula 1 cars always symmetrical? Is it in the rules and if it is allowed wouldn't there be some advantages from offsets and that kind of thing at certain tracks?
Antonio Oliveira, via email

It is in the rules that the car has to be symmetrical about its centreline, but that's a fairly vague guide because under the skin the car's cooling systems are actually not symmetrical.

With the variation in circuits, it would be fairly difficult to get much of an advantage from running the car offset. Even IndyCars, which go around in circles for much of their lives, are not too offset. Yes the springs, cambers, tyre pressures, etc, are different left-to-right but the basic package is more or less symmetrical.

I remember a long time ago Jacques Villeneuve was adamant that an Indy-style set up would be good for Estoril's long fast 180 degree right hander. And yes, it was, but you suffer too much with the rest of the circuit to get an overall gain.

The cambers and cornerweights might just be that little bit different left-to-right depending on the circuit. Also, the front wing left-to-right can be set independently but they're just small differences and, in reality, only a token gesture in the context of the overall set up.

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