Ferrari falls behind Mercedes in the last two races.
Frederic Vasseur, head of the Ferrari team, denied the claim that the team’s performance in the Spanish Grand Prix indicates that they have been surpassed by their Formula 1 competitors.
At the beginning of the season, Ferrari was the main challenger to Red Bull, achieving two wins and nine podiums in the first eight races with their revamped SF-24.
However, their strong start unraveled in Canada, where they faced pace issues and had a double retirement. Their performance in Spain was also below expectations.
Despite bringing a significant upgrade package to Barcelona, Ferrari failed to keep up with their immediate rivals, with Charles Leclerc finishing in fifth place and Carlos Sainz in sixth place.
Vasseur claims that the new parts worked as expected and emphasizes that the development race in Formula 1 means that potential gains are relative.
When asked about his satisfaction with the performance of the upgrades, Vasseur stated: “First of all, everyone is improving. This means that just because you bring something new, it doesn’t guarantee a significant improvement. However, if you don’t bring anything, you risk falling behind. Every team is introducing new parts every two or three races. Sometimes, we only reveal the aerodynamic updates, but it is important to remember that we are not only developing aerodynamics. Additionally, it may take one or two races to fully optimize the package we have. Currently, we are experiencing a convergence of performance over the past year.”
Vasseur acknowledges that it often takes several races to unlock the true potential of the upgrades and believes that incremental progress is the key.
When asked if the lack of rhythm was due to the suboptimal car setup, Vasseur replied: “No, but maybe we will have a better understanding of the car’s capabilities after one more race. Last year, it often happened that when teams introduced updates, the true performance was seen in the following race. This trend will continue because there is a limit to performance improvement. Additionally, the update packages are much smaller now compared to 24 months ago, which means we are operating within a smaller performance difference.”
Both Leclerc and Sainz expressed their belief that McLaren has surpassed Ferrari in terms of performance, but Vasseur argues that no team has made more progress than Ferrari since last season.
“McLaren finished 25 seconds ahead of us in the UK a year ago,” emphasized Vasseur. “I’m not convinced that their rate of development is much higher than ours.”
