The sun is shining over Ferrari’s Racing Division in Maranello. The Prancing Horse emblem gleams, and the red of the building near the historic headquarters seems to contrast with the clear blue sky of Emilia-Romagna. On the surface, everything appears calm, but that calm is only external. Inside, there is constant activity: work, ideas, and development programmes all aimed at bringing the Ferrari SF-26 to the Miami Grand Prix ready to continue its pursuit of Mercedes.
In short, everything is happening — even if it cannot be seen from the outside. You need to go inside the Racing Division, as Motorsport.com did, to understand how the month of April did not interrupt Ferrari’s development rhythm in any way. Confirming this is Loïc Serra, Ferrari’s technical director, who spoke exclusively about what the team is doing during the race break to prepare for the return of competition in Florida.
Loïc, it looks like a break, but we know it is not really a break. From the outside, a month without racing may seem like downtime. For people inside the company, how has the work changed compared to normal?
“I would say not much, because your development plan does not start in a week or a month: it is something you set up a long time ago. So in essence, you follow your development plan. You are not really influenced by whether there is one race less or two.”
Would it have been better to bring part of the package to Bahrain, or is it better to have more time to refine everything even if you then have to test it all together in Miami?
“One way to answer this is: when you think about the SF-26, we started developing the car at the beginning of 2025, and then you spend a year or more developing it without really testing it on track. What you learn comes from winter development, from virtual simulation, so you bring a car to the track that you have never truly run. If you put it like that, compared to missing two races, I would say it is a small thing. Of course, the more laps you do, the more you learn, and that applies to everyone. But to say that this compromises your development approach or puts the programme at risk, I do not think that is the case.”
A colleague from another team told me last week they had an upgrade ready for Bahrain, will use it in Miami, and already have the Montreal update ready too. So they are using upgrades for just one weekend. Is Ferrari’s plan different? Do you avoid that kind of situation?
“If you think about development as something non-linear… I am not sure I fully understand that logic, because the cost implications are quite significant. So if you bring parts to Miami and then another step in Canada, it depends on the size of the developments. If they are small, incremental updates, I understand that, and maybe some teams do it. But not necessarily in terms of full packages, more like incremental steps, and that would make perfect sense.”
Does the lack of race weekends affect correlation between track data and simulator, or make it harder to update?
“As I said before, the more laps you do on track, the more you learn about your car, your tyres, and the overall package. So when you have less track activity, that learning process does not happen. In a sense, it freezes correlation for a couple of weeks longer, but it is only a freeze. It does not stop you from developing based on what you already learned. It is just a small interruption in the learning rhythm on correlation.”
Does this period change the type of upgrades you choose to bring? More aggressive or more experimental?
“Not really. You have a development plan, and you follow it. There is no real concept of more aggressive or more experimental. You plan the development, but then there is planning and there is discovery. However, this does not change what you discover, because not racing does not change what you learn or do not learn in the factory. So it does not change your approach.”
In terms of opportunities, has this month without racing created any? Which area is most affected?
“I would say opportunities in performance terms in general, all of them. When you look at development, you do not isolate one area. It is always about the overall compromise that evolves. When you consider all performance contributors, you cannot work on them in isolation. When you change one thing, it affects the rest of the car. So you never treat developments as separate items; they are always part of a global compromise.”
We are waiting to see whether Formula 1 Commission will decide on possible regulation changes. Without going into specifics, I imagine every team is waiting for something that could influence their development plan. Will anything change?
“You can look at it from a regulatory point of view, but also from a competitor’s point of view. It is the same mechanism as when you see something on another car and think: interesting, maybe that direction… It is exactly the same. So we must ensure we can react in the most appropriate way to whatever comes. That is the challenge, because you do not want to rush decisions. You must ensure what you are doing makes sense for the coming months and does not corner you because you have not considered the full picture. And when one thing changes, often another follows. So you must move carefully. There are no real expectations. It is more about staying grounded and understanding where we are going and why.”
So nothing might happen at all?
“Nothing might happen at all. Sometimes you act simply because, compared to the rest of the grid, you see an area where you can make a step forward. But it is not driven by regulation changes, rather by direction changes. A general direction shift.”
From what Matteo Togninalli said earlier, this is a period when teams also start working more on next year’s project. Does having a few freer weeks help?
“I know it looks like a free period from the outside, but it is not. The programme is exactly the same. If you looked at people’s calendars, you would see that what we are doing on next year’s car was already planned, and what we are doing on this year’s car was already planned. We are planning the direction we are going in. We do not know the future, so we stick to the plan and try to get the most out of it. There is no sudden extra free time. In the factory, you do not get that.”
Without extra track activity, can you go deeper into data analysis compared to a normal race-to-race sequence?
“Yes, you have more time. When you do correlation, when I say you freeze, you freeze the inputs. But you continue working on the previous dataset and explore it more deeply. So you have more time to dedicate to that dataset because it carries you through the next two weeks, instead of moving immediately to a new one after a race.”
In your department, roughly how many people focus strictly on race-by-race analysis versus long-term planning?
“I will not give a number.”
But there are different roles?
“Not only are there different roles, but it is essential to keep them separate. Otherwise, short-term always consumes long-term planning. It always happens. Urgency takes over. So the only way to manage it is to segregate activities properly. People still communicate every day, of course, but you must ensure long-term work is not swallowed by short-term reaction. Everything depends on planning what you will bring in three months and so on. And that only works if you maintain continuity with minimal interruption while integrating what you learn day by day on track.”
Finally, about data: missing two race weekends means missing Bahrain and Jeddah. Does that affect your work?
“In Bahrain we had testing, so we have a good reference. For Jeddah, yes, you will miss some data points: tyres, conditions, layout, grip level. It is like a big puzzle and one piece is missing. You will recover part of it in the next races or combination of events, but that piece will definitely be missing.”
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