The last twenty minutes gave Ferrari’s Friday a very different face, as the team could not extract extra grip from the Soft tires. During the second session, however, the Scuderia experimented, including Lewis Hamilton: the Briton believes he has made progress, more than the standings suggest, and will not overhaul the setup.
Before the final twenty minutes of the second practice session, Ferrari’s Friday showed encouraging signs, suggesting a weekend that could deliver more satisfaction than previous events. But in those last twenty minutes, on the Soft tires and after the red flag caused by Liam Lawson’s incident, the face of the day changed drastically.
After setting the fastest time on the Medium tires, albeit later and with an extra attempt compared to rivals and therefore on a track in more favorable conditions, Ferrari could not recover the same feeling on the Soft. In Hamilton’s case, the fastest lap of the session did not come on the softer compound, due to a series of mistakes at the limit, but rather on the Medium tires.
The feeling, confirmed by some of Hamilton’s own requests, is that Ferrari used FP2 as a testing ground for various setup changes. Shortly before the interruption caused by Lawson’s red flag, the seven-time world champion requested a modification that, due to lack of time, could not be implemented without compromising the program.
The interruption caused by the Racing Bulls driver provided the opportunity to introduce Hamilton’s requested changes, moving to a less-loaded rear wing. A curious choice, considering that until then he had suffered rear tire degradation over long runs, complaining about some rear instability.
However, with limited time available, it was not possible to make deep mechanical changes before the Soft tire attempt. In that phase, Hamilton made several errors, even brushing the pit wall on multiple occasions. A similar path was followed by Charles Leclerc, who introduced some setup changes in FP2: further confirmation of how Ferrari concentrated much of the work on the setup.
The real challenge remains managing the Soft tires, a limitation Ferrari has carried since last season. On the eve of the weekend, we noted that to emerge in Singapore, the SF-25 needed to address the weaknesses shown throughout the year. Extracting performance from the Soft, especially during the critical moments between Q2 and Q3, is fully part of these aspects: an area where engineers will need to work thoroughly overnight to make a decisive step forward.
However, according to Lewis Hamilton, there will not be many changes to the setup compared to today’s sessions: “Overall it was a good day, I enjoyed driving the car. It was obviously my first time in a Ferrari on this track and I had always wondered, watching onboard footage over the years, what the differences would be: today I finally got to try them and it was positive,” said the Briton, giving a general assessment of the day.
Two themes are confirmed: McLaren’s speed, which still seems the benchmark, and the difficulty in putting together a clean lap on a track where even a few centimeters can make a difference. “McLaren is very fast and it is not easy to put together a clean lap, but I think there are many positive aspects to take away and a lot to learn. I am quite satisfied with the progress from one session to the next.”
“I think we made some steps forward today, so probably overnight we will not change much, but we will still try to fine-tune the setup and see if we can extract a bit more to get as close as possible to the McLarens.”
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