Ferrari He is working hard not to repeat the mistakes that cost him the title in 2022 and one of them was pit stops. For this reason, the Italians have planned to reach the first grand prix of the season having tested 1,000 stops.
This will be possible thanks to the stop simulator that they have installed at their headquarters in Fiorano, in which they will make sessions of 20 pit stops three times a week, as ‘Motorsport’ has revealed. In this way they will try to avoid the rulings that condemned Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz last season.
And, later, it was confirmed by the engineer in charge of changing the tires, Diego Iovernorevealing the good work they are doing: “During the tests we recorded record times extraordinary. We got to make stops of 1.65 seconds.”
This would mean the absolute record of a stop made in Formula 1, which to date holds it Red Bull with 1.82 seconds in the 2019 Brazilian GP, although Ferrari admits that these data are not truly real.
“In the simulator, the car always arrives perfectly aligned and at the expected point, unlike a Grand Prix, since many other variables come into play. It’s not only that, but during the sessions there is no stress or anxiety that in a GP yes there can be”, he qualified.
The ranges established in Formula 1 for the stops are mainly divided into the steps less than three seconds, which are considered very good savesand the greater than 4.5 seconds which are considered “true failures”.
Last season, Ferrari made 73% of the stops under three secondsabove Red Bull (71%), something that is not enough for Ioverno: “We could consider ourselves satisfied, but we are not because our goal was to reach 80% and we did not achieve it”.
Now the Scudería has raised the goal of good saves to 84%, as well as lowering the goal of bad saves to 9%, an aspect for which the Italians stood out too much in 2022.
Of course, Ioverno has controlled the problem that caused the failures in the stops: staff turnover. In such a long season, the teams also had to rest their mechanics and the second unit did not comply with what was required.
“It is essential to raise the level of the team. We analyze that problems arose when we were forced to rotate staff in such a long season. The intention in 2023 is to improve, to avoid losing a wheel in a pitstop as happened last year,” he concluded.
