After a difficult triple header, Frédéric Vasseur believes that the issues with Ferrari so far have ‘tonnes of solutions’.
After taking a second win of the season in Monaco, things quickly went downhill for the Maranello-based team. The upgrades in Spain caused the car to bounce and ultimately lost the team too much time to the teams ahead in high-speed circuits.
By Silverstone, they had chosen to go back to the Imola specification of the SF-24. Setting the development back by ‘three to six months’, according to Carlos Sainz.
When talking about the performance expectations in Hungary, Carlos Sainz was less than hopeful, “We will bounce in Turns 4 and 11 [in Hungary] but until something better comes. We may have to live with bouncing for a while.”
One of the proposed temporary solutions is running the older floor in the high-speed circuits and the new floor in lower-speed circuits.
When Fred Vasseur admitted, the team would be doing a ‘deep analysis’ on both the old and new spec floor. In hopes of accurately understanding where to go next.
He told media, “We will have to have a deep analysis of the weekend and consider the fact that Silverstone is by far the most aggressive track in terms of bouncing, with very high-speed corners and so on.”
Frédéric Vasseur remains optimistic
Despite the struggles, team principal Vasseur has remained positive about the choices for the prancing horses.
Vasseur even denied that the problems faced as a fundamental issue, instead just putting it down to an upgrade issue. Luckily, with this outlook, he deemed that there are ‘tonnes of solutions’ to the problems that have plagued the team.
“To fix it, you have tons of solutions. You have solutions with a compromise on performance, you have solutions without compromise on performance – developing a new package. I think we are there now.
“We will have to have the next race with the current car and the sooner the better. We will bring upgrades that have less bouncing.”
Fred Vasseur noted that the porpoising problem is more difficult because it doesn’t appear in the wind tunnel.
It is important for the prancing horses to fix the issue quickly, as the gap in the championship has gone for 30 points between Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc after Monaco to 105 points after Silverstone.
Vasseur told media that they suffered a similar problem last season but managed to turn it round quickly.
“We had exactly the same situation last year, almost at the same stage of the season – Silverstone, Budapest and Spa. We stopped it at Zandvoort, had a good scan of the situation, and had a good recovery because the weeks after, we were there.“
In an increasingly close season, it is vital for the issues with Ferrari to be fixed with haste, to minimize the potential damage to the championship prospects. Especially with both McLaren and Mercedes now appearing to taking a step ahead of the Maranello-based team.
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