Vasseur hopes Zandvoort-like approach will help Ferrari in the long-term
Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur hopes that the Scuderia's decision to use the Silverstone round as a test weekend will have a positive impact on the team’s performance in the second half of the season.
Ferrari kicked off the season in encouraging fashion, establishing itself as the field-leading Red Bull’s main contender. However, as the year progressed, Ferrari appeared to have fallen behind McLaren and Mercedes.
The main issue was presented by the Scuderia’s latest upgrade package that was introduced at Barcelona. Although the revised floor and engine cover improved the downforce level of the car, it induced an unintended effect in form of bouncing. The SF-24 has suffered from severe bouncing at Barcelona, Spielberg and Silverstone - the three rounds where the new package was used.
So severe was the bouncing that the Scuderia sacrificed the Silverstone round to run the different specifications on the opening day with Carlos Sainz using the Imola-spec SF-24 and Charles Leclerc testing the Barcelona-spec configuration.
With Leclerc complaining about severe bouncing in the high-speed corners of the Silverstone track on Friday, Ferrari elected to bring the weekend with the older specification on both cars to an end.
Expanding on the ‘test’ weekend in Great Britain, team boss Fred Vasseur said: “It is difficult to say after the result but we did a step forward in Silverstone. From a technical side, we have a better understanding of the situation on Sunday evening than on Friday morning.
“This is encouraging for the rest of the season. For sure, the result was not ideal because we compromised the result in qualifying than the race.
“We had exactly the same situation last year, almost at the same stage of the season – Silverstone, Budapest and Spa. We stop it at Zandvoort, had a good scan of the situation and had a good recovery because the weeks after, we were there.
“What is tough in this situation is you don’t have tests, proper tests, to fix it or to at least understand it. It is very difficult as a team to compromise or sacrifice Friday sessions when you know you are losing time during the weekend and say ‘ok, let’s forget about FP1, FP2 and focus on the mid-term’.
“Trust me, this decision as a team, is difficult because you start the weekend – and it was even worse at Silverstone with the weather – and it means you put yourself in a tough situation, but this we knew before, but it was even worse that Saturday morning was with wet tyres, but it is like it is.
The Frenchman hopes that the data collected at Silverstone will give Ferrari a clear answer: “We assumed the decision before the weekend and I think it was the right call to do it.
“We will have to have a deep analysis of the weekend and consider the fact that Silverstone is by far the most aggressive in terms of bouncing, with very high-speed corners and so on. But we will have time to discuss and decide for Budapest,” summed up Vasseur.
