D'Ambrosio reveals what Ferrari targets to achieve with latest upgrade

Ferrari's deputy team principal Jerome d'Ambrosio has opened up on what the Scuderia wanted to achieve with their first development of the 2025 F1 season.

The first day of track activity in Bahrain saw Ferrari get through a busy programme, involving three drivers, with Sweden’s 21 year old Dino Beganovic, the Maranello Driver Academy youngster, driving Charles Leclerc’s car in FP1 alongside Lewis Hamilton.

On the job sheet was an evaluation of the first update package of the season, the main element of which was the floor of the car, which worked as expected and was then used on both cars for the rest of the day. Apart from that, the teams went through the usual tasks of fine tuning the SF-25, starting from the baseline data acquired during last February’s test at this track.

This was only of limited use because of the very big difference in temperatures and atmospheric conditions between then and now.

The second one-hour session started as the sun was setting and was therefore the most representative as it took place at the same time of day as qualifying and the race. Leclerc was back behind the wheel of his SF-25, out on track with Medium tyres, as was Hamilton. The Englishman started with a useful 1’32”157, while the Monegasque was getting to grips with the track, setting a time of 1’32”755.

In the middle part of the hour, both cars went out on Soft tyres at which point Leclerc set the fourth fastest time of 1’31”045 while his team-mate Hamilton set his personal best of 1’31”652 before taking on more fuel to run in race trim.

Assessing the Scuderia's development in Sakhir, Ferrari deputy team principal Jerome d'Ambrosio has revealed that the Italian marque simply wanted to increase the overall aerodynamic downforce of the SF-25 with the heavily-updated floor.

"I think more than a characteristic change, it's just, you know, adding a bit of performance, adding a bit of downforce in the continuity of what we've been developing over the winter.

"We've added a little bit of downforce, kept a good drivability and added a bit of performance on the on the car. Having said that, our expectations are not that this is going to revolutionize the whole performance.

"It's just hopefully adding that bit of performance that's in the end, very important because every 100th that you add on the car it's a step forward and that's what we're trying to chase, just to add marginal and steady gains on the car."

Pushed on to reveal which area of the car was going to benefit the most from the upgrade, d'Ambrosio said: "There's no one area. It's not like, oh we got to fix this or that, you know, we're pretty close and so I think in the end it's a mix of things, you know, it's trying to improve the balance.

"It's trying to add a little bit of downforce. It's trying to put everything in the window, and that's in the end how you move forward. It's a lot of little gains in many places that in the end brings you the result, and that's really the approach we're trying to trying to have because it's a steady approach."