We expected trouble here – Arrivabene
Ferrari’s Maurizio Arrivabene claims that Ferrari braced itself beforehand that it would face a difficult weekend at Silverstone. The Italian team acknowledged its car's weaknesses and knows it has to cure its problems before it really can challenge the field-leading Mercedes on a regular basis.
At this weekend's British Grand Prix at Silverstone, the Ferrari SF16-H didn’t prove to be competitive in any kind of conditions. The drivers failed to find the rhythm with the car in qualifying, but the usually better race pace was also difficult to find.
Arrivabene did not sound too disheartened as he admitted his squad arrived to the high-speed track in Great Britain with negative feelings.
“We knew, coming here, that it would not be an easy track for us-but if you want to be on top, there must be no ‘difficult’ ones,” said Arrivabene.
“This is a circuit which, power unit aside, puts a premium on other factors which we were lacking here. It’s not the first time it happens, but perhaps it was much more apparent this weekend.”
As for the race, Arrivabene was delighted with the strategy which he called aggressive.
“In these conditions, we opted for a very aggressive strategy, pitting in for Intermediates after the initial Safety Car stint. Unfortunately, this choice did not pay off because of the Virtual Safety Car which came out immediately afterwards.”
“But to be honest, the best we could have done was to gain one position in the race. Our drivers did a solid job, despite being hampered and somewhat frustrated by the technical issues we are aware of."
The Italian promised though that the next race at Hungary, in just 2 weeks time, would not be a repeat of the troubled British race weekend, and that Ferrari would as such return to its normal competitive level.
“Now we must turn the page, look ahead to Hungary and capitalize on the hard lesson we learned here.”
