Our car is quick, but sensitive – Arrivabene

Ferrari team principal Maurizio Arrivabene thinks that his team has a very good package which has inherent speed, but it reacts very sensitively on setup changes. The flamboyant Italian promises that his team will push on the development of this year’s car.

Arrivabene is not delighted with the performance deficit which Ferrari has to its arch-rival Mercedes, but he is not too upset either as his team is constantly closing in.

“We have a gap to Mercedes, but we are that not far behind,” Maurizio Arrivabene is quoted as saying by motorsport-total.com.

The Italian does not want to hear about abandoning the development of this year’s car as he believes in Ferrari’s chances in the unprecedented long season which includes 21 races.

“It is crazy to speak about next year. We have to concentrate on this year.”

Ferrari has managed to improve on its power unit massively over the last one and half a year. That was the territory Mercedes excelled in with the introduction of the new V6 hybrid era. Some suggest that Ferrari only has a power deficit of around 10 hp in terms of peak power, and the team also made huge gains in terms of ERS, power deployment.

However, Ferrari’s performance swung not just from race to race this year, but also from session to session during a race weekend. Pirelli’s very hard tyres are said to cause that wobble.

“We focus our attention on areas where we have weaknesses and we try to improve on those.”

„We have already seen in Canada that our engine seems to be our strong point. We still have to work on other areas. The car reacts very sensitively on setup changes.”

„The car has to be improved. Our pace in races is strong. We have worked on that in Baku and we could improve. That is not enough though,” said Arrivabene.