Following a far from eye-catching Austrian Grand Prix weekend for Ferrari, team principal Fred Vasseur defended the team’s development plan in the wake of an apparent slump in form.
Ferrari suffered yet another disappointing weekend in Austria with the Italian marque yet again failing to live up to the highs of Monaco. A respectable Sprint performance on Saturday saw Carlos Sainz secure P5 with teammate Charles Leclerc managing P7 at the flag. This middling performance was followed by a Grand Prix of mixed fortunes on Sunday.
Despite a podium for Carlos Sainz who crossed the line P3, capitalising on Verstappen and Norris’ now infamous spat, Charles Leclerc failed to score points for the second time since his emotional home victory in May. Falling foul of contact on the opening lap leading to the Monegasque driver dropping down to last place, a P11 finish was all he could muster.
With the team struggling to compete against Red Bull and McLaren in recent races, questions have been raised about their substantial upgrade package which was introduced in Barcelona last month. Speaking following the Austrian Grand Prix, team principal Fred Vasseur defended the team’s development strategy.
“Honestly, yes,” Vasseur replied when asked if he believed the team were heading in the right direction with their updates. “If we finished the lap yesterday in Quali, I think I will have the comments that ‘you are back, you are fighting with Red Bull, you are less than one tenth of the pole position,’ blah, blah, blah.
“It’s just in any case, and I think you can take my quote of Monaco, I think I was saying exactly the same. It’s not after a good result or a bad result that we have to change the mindset or the team or whatever. We had good weekends, some weekends we were faster than everybody, some weekends we were at the level of max, some weekends we are at step down, and I think this weekend we started a step down, but the reaction was good and I think on Saturday [afternoon] we were in a much better shape. We don’t want to change that.
“I think Silverstone will be helpful for us. We have ideas into the pipe, we have upgrades to bring later on, but we won’t change the approach and we will continue to push.”
With questions already raised about the team’s updates, mentions from the drivers of a return of the infamous porpoising phenomenon first seen with the introduction of the current generation of cars raised alarm bells. Despite this Vasseur remained calm when asked of the issue, explaining that a change in setup was all that was required.
“I think it was much better yesterday afternoon already,” he replied when asked about the recurring gremlin. “It’s also a matter of setup and it’s not the first time that when you bring an upgrade on the car that you need one or two weekends.
“If you have a look at the last two years, it was quite often like this. When you bring something, sometimes, as the upgrades now are a bit less powerful than it was in the past with the asymptote of performance, sometimes you also have a deficit on the tuning of the car and you need one or two weekends to be at the top of the upgrade. That’s why the FP1 and the FP2 in Silverstone will be [important].”
