F1 presenter Will Buxton believes Ferrari can trace their F1 2024 Constructors’ title defeat to McLaren back to a “catastrophic” SF-24 upgrade at the Spanish Grand Prix.

Despite a dominant start to the F1 2024 season for Red Bull, it would be McLaren and Ferrari who ultimately battled for the Constructors’ title going into the Abu Dhabi season finale. Both Ferrari drivers Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc made the podium, but Lando Norris drove to victory as McLaren clinched the title by 14 points.

Did Ferrari lose the title with ‘catastrophic’ Spain upgrade?

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

And when Ferrari look back and analyse this defeat, Buxton says they can go straight to their Spanish GP upgrade for the answer.

The set of updates worsened Ferrari’s porpoising issues, with the Scuderia making the podium only once in the following four races including Spain.

“They didn’t lose the World Championship tonight. They lost it in Spain with that catastrophic upgrade that they brought to the car which took it backwards,” said Buxton on F1 TV.

“That they held on to second place in the Constructors’ Championship for as long as they did was a testament to just the relentless drive from them.

“But they will rue that mistake. They will rue the correlation errors that led to them putting that thing on the car in the first place.”

Final F1 2024 head-to-head standings

👉 F1 2024: Head-to-head qualifying record between team-mates

👉 F1 2024: Head-to-head race statistics between team-mates

While Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur admits they lost “80 or 90 points on McLaren” in that turbulent period with the upgrade troubles, he nonetheless was “quite proud” of the progress he has seen in F1 2024.

Asked by the media including PlanetF1.com for his verdict on Ferrari’s season, Vasseur replied with a smile: “Good one, but not enough.

“I think that if you compare with one year ago, it’s a huge step forward.

“On every single KPI [key performance indicator], everything is green., and we did a good one in terms of pit stop strategy, reliability, we improved everywhere – even in terms of pure performance.

“It’s true that, at the end, 14 points are missing, and if you are 80 or 100 points behind, you don’t feel the frustration. Fourteen points, you have, or at least tonight, I have tons of races in my mind where we lost 14 points this season, but it is like it is.

“McLaren also had some issues, and just that we have to do a better job next year – but I’m also quite proud of the step that we did.”

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