Ferrari brought forward partial updates which are originally planed for Hungarian GP. The Italian team brought new Front wing and new floor on SF1000 to evaluate with back to back data.This is the first time in formula 1 history that race held in same track on back-to-back weekends.
During last weekend’s race, Ferrari struggled for top speed and they lost nearly 0.7 seconds on Straights compared to their rivals according Binotto,only Saturday qualifying session will reveal the worthiness of these updates in-terms of pace.
FP1
Charles Leclerc and Sebastian Vettel completed a total of 53 laps. Both men worked on evaluating aerodynamic updates and on set-up. Leclerc completed 25 laps and Vettel 28, using the Hard and Soft compounds.
FP2
Both drivers Running mainly on the Medium tyres, the two drivers completed 75 laps,gathering plenty of data which will be analysed overnight to get a complete picture of the efficiency of the new aero package brought here. With the chance of tomorrow’s qualifying being held in the wet, the team worked mainly on race set up, deciding to use just one set of Softs for the qualifying simulation and both drivers set their best times on this compound. Charles posted a 1’04”706, which put him ninth on the list, while Vettel set a similar time, but as he ran wide at the penultimate corner, it was disallowed for exceeding track limits. The German’s best time was therefore the 1’05”613 he did on the Medium tyres and so not representative. The drivers ended the session doing the usual long runs with a high fuel load.
Charles Leclerc on his Friday runs and Ferrari upgrades
“We had a difficult day, even though towards the end, we made some progress on high fuel load runs. Let’s see whether tomorrow or on Sunday, depending on the weather, we can also make progress in low fuel conditions.
There’s potential in the updates we’ve brought here. We need to keep working on them to tune them and define all they can deliver. I am happy about the prospect of rain, so let’s see what tomorrow brings. Hopefully, if it rains, it won’t be too hard, so we’ll still be able to take on the track and see where we can be on the starting grid.”
Sebastian Vettel talks about new upgrades
“Today the car felt a lot better than last week. Right from the start, it was a different car and I was just able to get on with it. Now I hope it stays like this. If you look at the time sheet, I got my best lap deleted so obviously it wasn’t a great day for lap times, but there will be rain tomorrow, so we are just preparing in case quali is on Sunday.
For us, the main thing was testing the upgrades that we brought. We put them on the car step by step and they seemed to work well. We still need to have a look and find the best window where the car is happiest. We tried quite a few things on the brakes and I still need to find the rhythm. Apart from that, we did our usual Friday homework. Let’s see how wet it’s going to be tomorrow, it might mix things up.”
