Ferrari ditches Barcelona package and reverts to the Imola configuration for the British Grand Prix
Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur conceded that Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc will race with the pre-Barcelona aerodynamic configuration at tomorrow's British Grand Prix.
Since it introduced a comprehensive package of upgrades at Barcelona, Ferrari has suffered from bouncing in the high-speed corners. So severe were the issues that the Scuderia came up with an unusual programme for the opening day at the British Grand Prix. It involved collecting data and running comparison tests of different configurations.
The aim was to continue acquiring information relating to the behaviour of the updates introduced two races ago in Spain. To provide the team with as much data as possible, making the most of the fact that the rain held off for almost all of the two hours of track time, it was decided to bring forward a comparison between pre- and post-Barcelona configurations.
Charles Leclerc ran the car in Austria spec, while Sainz went back to the one used in Canada. With Leclerc having suffered from severe bouncing and an unpredictable behaviour of his SF-24 yesterday, the team decided to ditch the new package and revert the Monegasque's car to the older configuration for qualifying and the race.
Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur acknowledged that the bouncing prompted the Scuderia to take a step back and use the older package on both cars.
"I think today we didn’t execute qualifying well enough and that meant we were unable to put everything together. We decided to move to the old spec for today as there was more bouncing with the new one and with the high speed corners we have at Silverstone, the trade-off of fitting the new parts wasn’t positive enough.
Speaking of today's qualifying session, Vasseur said: "In Q2 there were nine cars in one tenth and the track evolved considerably. Carlos made the cut to the final part, but Charles made a mistake in turn 13 that meant he didn’t make it to Q3.
"The last phase was also messy as Carlos was able to put together a decent lap on his first set but then we were slowed by traffic at the second attempt and he had to fight for track positions with Oscar Piastri and Fernando Alonso and couldn’t prepare the tyres in the right way.
"As for the race, I think that given our grid positions, if it rains then the race might be more chaotic and that could suit us better than a dry afternoon. We need to nail our strategy and execute the race perfectly if we want to bring home a decent points haul.
