Ioverno: It turns out we chose extreme settings

Ferrari sporting director Diego Ioverno explained what the team did wrong and how this miscalculation led to Charles Leclerc’s disqualification. When it was already late in the evening in Austin, he commented on the decision of the stewards of the American Grand Prix, which saw the Monegasque lose fifth place, but Carlos Sainz moved up to third.

According to Ioverno, the problem is mainly due to the fact that there was very little time to find the optimal settings for such a complex circuit as the Circuit of the Americas.

Diego Ioverno: “As you probably know, the race ended for us in an unusual way: the stewards of the American Grand Prix decided to disqualify Charles and Lewis for violating the technical regulations. What happened?

The technical regulations clearly prescribe that there are a number of parameters that the lower part of the car must comply with after the race. At the bottom of the car there are elements that protect the chassis against irregularities in the asphalt. During the measuring process after the finish of the Grand Prix, it turned out that one of our cars did not meet the requirements of the regulations.

The magnitude of the difference was very small, but it was enough for the stewards to declare a violation. In such cases the rules do not provide for sanctions other than disqualification. And I’ll try to explain why we think this happened.

Sprint race weekends have specific characteristics: we have very little time to prepare the car. On Friday there is only one training session, after which the cars are placed in a closed park, and from then on we cannot touch them anymore.

Of course the circuit in Austin is very interesting, but it has a very uneven surface. Bumps on the asphalt cause major problems for both drivers and affect the cars. In previous years, almost all teams in Austin had some degree of problems due to suspension failures and chassis damage.

We knew that difficulties awaited us, so during Friday’s practice we increased the ground clearance of the cars, and from our point of view everything should have been fine. But in reality it turned out that we had chosen extreme settings that were too close to the acceptable limit. In addition, the situation was also affected by the wind, which changed direction, and its strength was much higher than predicted.

Due to all these factors, it turned out that one of our cars did not meet the technical regulations at the end of the race. And there’s not much to add since there’s nothing we can do right now. If we had analyzed our work from the very beginning of the weekend, we probably could have increased the ground clearance of the car, but then efficiency would have been lost.

And of course we always strive for optimal efficiency. But one of the side effects of everything I talked about was Carlos Sainz’s podium, and we closed the gap on Mercedes by a few more points because they are now our main rivals.

In less than a week we will be back on track, but now in Mexico City, and we hope to earn points there. We will try to make the next weekend more successful for us.”