Charles Leclerc says Ferrari can extract more performance from their car despite not introducing any upgrades at Silverstone this weekend.
Ferrari are the only team of the current top five in the constructors’ championship to not bring any new parts for their car for this weekend’s British Grand Prix.
However, Leclerc insists that the team can still extract more speed out of their car in its current specification, once they figure out how to optimise it for the last set of upgrades they introduced.
“We are still trying to work out where we need to set up the car in order to maximise the potential of those upgrades,” Leclerc told media including RaceFans. “Because, as I’ve said many times, the [performance] numbers that we were expecting from this upgrade is there.
“The upgrade is working the way it should be, but it’s more about where you run the car to optimise those numbers that we see that for now, we haven’t quite managed to do that. So we are still working on that.”
Leclerc believes Ferrari have potential solutions to be able to squeeze the best out of their updated car sooner rather than later.
“I think it’s very much in the optimisation of the package,” he said. “So it’s something that can be solved short-term.
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“We already have a few ideas in the direction we want to push, as we’ve seen some big differences between the cars in the last race. So I definitely don’t think that it’s something that we cannot fix short-term. It’s definitely, a short-term priority to fix that and we believe we can do that.”
Ferrari are one of several teams this season who have brought significant upgrades packages to their cars but have not gotten the immediate gains in performance that they would have wanted. Asked if large upgrades packages are a riskier prospect these days, Leclerc says the closeness of competition is the key factor.
“I think it’s always been the same,” he said. “The only thing that changes today is that in two tenths, you can go from a hero to struggling a lot.
“In Austria, for example, being two tenths off pole means that you are going from P1 or P2 to P5 or P6. So that makes a big difference and whenever you bring a new package, you need to make sure that you optimise it as quickly as possible.
“You’ve got to do that, otherwise you also stay behind and others improve and you don’t. So it’s only by optimising our package that we’ll do a step forward and not by staying where we were at the beginning of the season and not improve the car. So it’s definitely a risk worth taking.”
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