Will Ferrari startline advantage make up for lack of puff in Melbourne?

What have we found out about the all-new F1 after the first qualifying session of the new era? Besides a big Mercedes GP advantage around Albert Park, with George Russell’s pole time 0.8sec clear of the best non-Mercedes and Kimi Antonelli making it onto the front row despite a session very compromised by a big FP3 crash.

So was Mercedes sandbagging through testing, perhaps concerned about the possible decision regarding its compression ratio interpretation? Was the Bahrain testing appearance of a Ferrari which closely matched the Merc just a desert mirage? Here, fourth-fastest Charles Leclerc was 0.8sec adrift of Russell and on much the same pace as Red Bull (for which Isack Hadjar was third quickest) and McLaren (with Oscar Piastri half-a-tenth behind in fifth).

Well, around here at least, we can see that the Ferrari is actually the fastest of all through the turns. It’s in power deployment and management that the Mercedes scores heavily. In the long full throttle run between Turns 8 and 9 the Ferrari loses almost 0.3sec, with a further 0.3sec loss in the straight between Turns 10 and 11. Even compared to Hadjar’s Red Bull, the Ferrari loses significant time (around 0.2sec) in that extended run between 8-9 but is faster in almost every corner. Given that active aerodynamics mean that differences in wing level will no longer be a major factor in lap time patterns, we are looking at power harvesting and deployment in explaining this.

We’ve explained here before about how we should expect there to be a bigger competitive swing between PUs according to circuit layouts. The Ferrari, and its smaller turbo, may simply be running out of top-end puff compared to the Mercedes around the extended flat-out stretches of Albert Park. Because, coming out of the turns, it actually accelerates harder. Such a combination of traits would make the Ferrari PU better suited to the Sakhir layout’s constant punctuation in flat-out running and repeated lower gear acceleration. Are we seeing the beginning of a pattern whereby the Ferrari is better suited to slow stop/start tracks and the Mercedes to faster, more flowing, layouts?

But what of McLaren, a car running the same Mercedes PU as the works cars of Russell and Antonelli? The pattern of its lap looks nothing like that of the Mercedes. What stands out in that comparison is that the McLaren is much shorter-geared. Piastri and Lando Norris are in eighth gear even between Turns 2 and 3, whereas the Mercedes doesn’t get out of seventh even on the much longer pit straight. The up-changes are all much earlier and it’s clear McLaren has configured a very different sort of car to Mercedes; not only is it 10cm shorter in wheelbase but now we see confirmation of the shorter ratios. Again, this is not the ideal for a fast, flowing circuit such as this. It also has implications upon energy management.

At one point Norris was being advised that his battery pack was full by Turn 4 and that he should begin using it up earlier on the pit straight to begin the lap, so that he could continue harvesting beyond Turn 4. Although the shorter gearing gets the McLaren a higher terminal speed on the pit straight, running in eighth rather than seventh means its PU is running 11,000rpm rather than the 11,500rpm of Russell who stays in seventh. The faster initial acceleration out of the slow corners provided by the McLaren’s lower gearing will also alter the electrical energy usage.