Since bringing upgrades to the Spanish Grand Prix last month, Ferrari has regressed backwards, with both drivers mentioning bouncing in the fast corners, and a plain lack of overall speed.
To mitigate this issue, Ferrari reverted to older floors for the British Grand Prix, a fast-paced circuit with many corners in the middle sector that would’ve caused them major issues, as Charles Leclerc found out in FP2.
However, their efforts didn’t yield the expected result as the Monegasque exited the qualifying session in P11. Carlos Sainz only qualified seventh, behind Nico Hülkenberg in his Haas, Ferrari’s customer team.
Sainz explained how the team anticipated a tough weekend, regardless of the changes.
“Yeah, and no surprise really, given our struggles recently in high-speed tracks coming to the king of the high-speed like Silverstone, it was always going to be a difficult weekend.”
He emphasised that the team’s decision to revert to their old floor spec was made to give the drivers a better feeling, more confidence and consistency in the quick stuff.
“It hasn’t given us any extra performance, it’s just given us a little bit more consistency in the high-speed given we have a bit less bouncing on that floor and we need to make the car as consistent or as predictable as possible in the high-speed, knowing that obviously we’re not going forward so backwards we’re just making the car a bit more consistent.
“At least from the beginning of the year we already had a bit of bouncing, so yeah, it’s still an intrinsic weakness of the car, but the new one was clearly worse than the old one.”
He then asserted his confidence that the team can deliver the upgrades needed to get back in the fight with the top 3, pointing to their Suzuka update in 2023, as well as the gains made over the winter.
“I think the direction is clear, it’s whether we’re capable of delivering it on track and giving us what we need. We proved it last year that we develop very well through the year. We proved it again during the winter that we made this car clearly more consistent and better, but for sure the recent steps haven’t been what we expected.”
