After having dropped behind Mercedes in terms of performance, Ferrari hopes to be able to use the three free practice sessions in Silverstone to find more answers.
The Scuderia started the season as Red Bull’s main contender, but after Charles Leclerc’s victory in Monaco, things didn’t go as planned. They scored a double DNF in Canada, then they only finished 5th and 6th in Spain. In Austria, Carlos Sainz finished on the podium only thanks to Lando Norris and Max Verstappen crashing into each other, while due to a broken front wing on the first lap, Leclerc only ended up in P11.
Anyway, despite the results, which can be dictated by many factors such as crashes or mechanical issues, in terms of raw performance, Ferrari now seems the fourth-fastest team. In Spain, the Scuderia brought an important upgrade package, which hasn’t been working as intended so far. Therefore, the team hopes to find more answers and a better balance during Silverstone’s free practice sessions.
However, Ferrari’s plan might be ruined by bad weather conditions hitting the track on Friday.
“We revert to the standard format this weekend, which means we have three hours of free practice in which to find a set-up that allows us to exploit the benefits that the new parts should deliver,” team principal Frederic Vasseur said.
“Knowing how best to set up the car can actually have a bigger effect on lap time than the specific benefits of any new components.”
Should rain compromise the session, Leclerc admitted that these tests might be done during the next weekend.
“If it rains [too much], then maybe the test that we wanted to do between both cars to confirm a few things will have to be postponed to the next race.
“However, we are still trying to work out where we need to set up the car in order to maximize the potential of those upgrades because the numbers that we were expecting from this upgrade are there.
“So, the upgrade is working the way it should be, but it’s more about where you run the car to optimize those numbers that we see. For now, we haven’t quite managed to do that, so we are still working on that.”
Finally, Sainz also admitted that Ferrari has been underperforming since Barcelona, but everyone is committed to finding what to do to make everything work as best as possible.
“We accept and we realize that since Barcelona we have been less competitive than before Barcelona. This obviously raises a bit our concerns on the package, and we need to try to understand as much as possible everything involved with it.”