Ferrari Facing Upgrade “Concern” After Miami Package Fails to Deliver Expected Performance

Barretto continued:

“So, I think it is worrying. I think they’ll be more worried when they saw what Red Bull brought and how much of a step they were able to make. Obviously, how much of a step McLaren have made as well. So I think they will be concerned. Equally though, Ferrari have had a habit in the last couple of years of bringing parts and they don’t work.

“So I think that they probably shouldn’t be too hard on themselves because Charles probably should have had a podium again today. That would have made him three out of four podiums, so I guess it’s all relative to how well or how bad it’s been.”

Leclerc was running at the front for large stretches of the race before his disastrous final-lap. The package may not have delivered the leap in pace the team wanted, but the underlying car is far from slow.

Of course, bringing upgrades and understanding them enough to extract performance from them is two different things.

“I was talking to one technical director actually ahead of the weekend and he was like, ‘what if we bring all these bits and it’s one bit that doesn’t work? It’s going to take us ages to work out which bit.’ So I think actually let’s just let it play out a little bit longer.”

He added: “I actually still think Ferrari are in a good spot. It’s just this upgrade package just hasn’t delivered or they just haven’t found how to get the most out of it because they’ve only had 90 minutes of practice and it might just be that they bought too much stuff and they then don’t know.”

Ferrari’s own race report claimed the upgrades “worked as expected, bringing extra performance to the package.”

The team apparently believes the direction is right. Canada, where a second phase of development is already planned, will tell them how right.