Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur always downplays the impact of specific upgrade packages, so by his standards his verdict after the debut of the upgraded Formula 1 power unit was encouraging despite confirming it's still at a deficit on power.
With Charles Leclerc second fastest in FP2, 0.120s slower than pacesetting Mercedes driver George Russell, and showing promising long-run pace, there was nothing on Friday to suggest that Ferrari had taken a giant leap to the front. What there was is proof of gains with the second engine upgrade introduced under the FIA’s Additional Development and Upgrade Opportunities (ADUO) regulations, the first having arrived in Austria in late June.
"You have to keep in mind the performance in the straight line is the drag, the weight of the car, it's everything, it's not just the engine," said Vasseur. "We did a step for sure, and we didn't bring ADUO 2 for nothing, but I think we still have a decent gap."
What Lewis Hamilton calls a "considerable" deficit to Mercedes was evident on the straights. Comparing Leclerc's fastest FP2 lap to Russell's, there is a clear pattern of the Ferrari losing ground on the straights but making gains on the brakes and through the corners.
He loses around six tenths in the first two-thirds of the lap before clawing back a couple of those on the final straight, with Russell suffering more clipping on the run to Parabolica. In line with the comments of many teams and drivers, there's still plenty of room for optimisation of the harvesting and deployment strategies on this energy-starved track.
While Hamilton complained about the balance that made it "really hard to pull the lap out of the car" and "not an easy one to drive" after some set-up changes in FP2, he was hopeful that there are gains to come both in terms of set-up and the energy management. "That's what we need to look into, if it's that [or] if it's the deployment," said Hamilton when asked if there could be gains in trimming back the downforce and therefore drag. "But the engine is an improvement, which I'm really grateful for the guys back at the factory for working on. But our deployment schedule is different to the others, our competitors. It seems like they maybe have less drag for the straights, so that's something we need to definitely look at."
Hamilton also described the engine as "really nice to drive in the low speed". But it was Leclerc who led the way for Ferrari not only on single-lap pace but the long runs. His long run was just three hundredths a lap on average off Kimi Antonelli's, albeit with the significant caveat that Leclerc was on the softs and the Mercedes on the hards. Despite that offset, that potentially puts Ferrari as the closest challenger, albeit with most expecting Mercedes to have the edge depending on how overnight changes shift the balance of power.
The wildcard in this is Red Bull, with Max Verstappen complaining of balance problems and playing catch-up after sitting out FP1 to ... [TRUNCATED]
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