Reflecting on Ferrari’s upgrade package that included a new floor to the SF-25, Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton claimed that while the new parts have delivered what they had been expected to bring to the car, the Maranello-based team is still behind the field-leading McLaren.
The first day of track activity in Bahrain saw Ferrari get through a busy programme, involving three drivers, with Sweden’s 21 year old Dino Beganovic, the Maranello Driver Academy youngster, driving Charles Leclerc’s car in FP1 alongside Lewis Hamilton.
On the job sheet was an evaluation of the first update package of the season, the main element of which was the floor of the car, which worked as expected and was then used on both cars for the rest of the day. Apart from that, the teams went through the usual tasks of fine tuning the SF-25, starting from the baseline data acquired during last February’s test at this track.
This was only of limited use because of the very big difference in temperatures and atmospheric conditions between then and now.
The second one-hour session started as the sun was setting and was therefore the most representative as it took place at the same time of day as qualifying and the race. Leclerc was back behind the wheel of his SF-25, out on track with Medium tyres, as was Hamilton. The Englishman started with a useful 1’32”157, while the Monegasque was getting to grips with the track, setting a time of 1’32”755.
In the middle part of the hour, both cars went out on Soft tyres at which point Leclerc set the fourth fastest time of 1’31”045 while his team-mate Hamilton set his personal best of 1’31”652 before taking on more fuel to run in race trim.
While Leclerc had a big deficit to the field-leading McLarens, he at least confirmed that Ferrari’s upgraded floor appears to be working as expected.
“We’re just not fast enough when we look at the McLaren, they are just on another planet for now,” Leclerc sighed. “It’s annoying but it’s the way it is, and it actually motivates me to try and close that gap as soon as possible. They are incredibly fast.
“[The upgrades] are positive, but unfortunately the gap to McLaren is still big. We’ve got to maximise the car potential that we have for now. If that means finishing third, fourth, fifth, I don’t know what that will be, but we’ll have to take it.
His team-mate Lewis Hamilton echoed Leclerc’s words, as he also praised Ferrari’s for the hard efforts that have gone into the Scuderia’s first round of upgrades.
“The upgrades are definitely working. A big thank you to everyone back home for working so hard on bringing the upgrades because it’s never an easy thing.
“It’s a lot of work that goes on in the wind tunnel and a lot of work that goes on in fabricating and putting together these floors, so it’s just good to see that we’re taking steps forward and we’re trying to now extract more from it. I hope that we can make the right steps overnight.”
