Ferrari gained technical understanding at the British Grand Prix that should benefit it for the rest of the season, says team principal Fred Vasseur.
An upgrade introduced at the Spanish Grand Prix led to an increase in bouncing that was impacting performance, with Ferrari trying to identify solutions over the following rounds in Austria and Great Britain. Vasseur says the team compromised the weekend at Silverstone – where Carlos Sainz was fifth and Charles Leclerc failed to score – to analyze the situation, and has made wider progress due to that choice.
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“It’s difficult to say this after the result, but I think we did a step forward [at Silverstone], at least on the technical side,” Vasseur said. “We have a much better understanding of the situation Sunday evening than Friday morning, and this I think is encouraging for the last part of the season.
“For sure the result is not ideal, but we compromised mainly the result [on Saturday], more than [Sunday]. Carlos did a solid race, that he was able to come back at Max [Verstappen] on the first stint and to stay 10 laps on Max’s gearbox, with mediums at the beginning of the race.
“And on Charles it’s a bit more chaotic, because he was stuck behind [Lance] Stroll, he lost 10 seconds, and when we had the first call for the pit stop, it was a bit on the edge. I think we collectively were a bit too aggressive.”
Despite the race results not being to Vasseur’s liking, he says it was a tough decision to focus on the longer-term during the Silverstone weekend, but a valuable one even though the weather further impacted that approach.
“I think we had exactly the same situation last year, almost at the same stage of the season – Silverstone, Budapest, Spa – and we stopped it in Zandvoort to do a complete scan of the situation, and we had a good recovery, because the weeks after we were there,” he said. “
“What is tough in this situation is that when you have an issue, you don’t have a proper test to fix it, or at least to understand it. And it’s quite difficult as a team sometimes to compromise or sacrifice a Friday session, when you know that you are losing a little bit of time during the weekend, and to say, ‘OK, let’s forget about FP1, FP2, be focused on mid-term’.
“Trust me, this decision as a team is very difficult, because you start the weekend, and it was even worse in Silverstone with the weather. It means that we put ourselves in a tough situation, but this we knew before. And it was even worse with the fact that the Saturday morning was with wet tires, that for sure it was not helpful, but we assumed the decision before the weekend, and I think it was the right call to do it.”