After setbacks in the last three Grands Prix, the start of the British weekend hasn’t reignited hope at Ferrari, with Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz finishing the second free practice session only in fifth and eighth place, respectively six and seven-tenths behind a blazing Lando Norris, who today seems the favorite to win his home race.
A Still unknown Ferrari
To address the issues that arose with the introduction of the second update package in Barcelona, the Maranello team decided to run both FP1 and FP2 with two different configurations to gather data and make a direct comparison on the track. Carlos Sainz used the Imola specification while Charles Leclerc ran with the more updated version.
The results, at least time-wise, were not particularly encouraging. Charles Leclerc finished the day with almost the same time as his teammate, benefiting from greater speed in the slower corners but suffering terribly from bouncing in the fast corners, especially at Copse and through the Maggots-Becketts sequence.
“We did a lot of tests today and tonight we will analyze the data we collected to make the comparisons we need and decide the next steps with the team,” said the number 16 at the end of FP2, giving a first assessment of the day’s on-track performance.
He then added: “At the moment we are not completely satisfied. That’s why we will continue to work hard to try to solve the problems we encountered today and prepare for a good qualifying session tomorrow.”
Ferrari must now decide which configuration to use for the rest of the weekend, evaluating whether to qualify and race with the old (or new) package on both cars or continue to differentiate as Racing Bulls did in the previous event in Austria.
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