Ferrari update coming to counter recent Red Bull success

Ferrari will introduce an upgrade package at the Spanish Grand Prix that team principal Mattia Binotto hopes will respond to Red Bull’s minutiae – and he says that should be impacted by the upkeep cap soon.

Red Bull made a well-spoken step forward with new parts brought to Imola and duly dominated that race weekend, surpassing Max Verstappen won then in Miami despite starting third overdue the two Ferraris. Binotto says the trend is that Red Bull has ripened its car increasingly than Ferrari over the opening part of the season, but he says he can’t see how that can protract given upkeep cap restraints.

“First I unchangingly said that we should wait five races at least to assess the proper competitiveness between the cars,” Binotto said. “Now, five races has gone. We are leading both championships which is unconfined so we should not be too disappointed, but it’s true that Red Bull improved their car, improved it since the very start of the season while they introduced upgrades, and if I squint at the last two races, maybe they got a couple of tenths per lap faster to us.

“It’s no doubt that in order to alimony the pace we will need to develop ourselves with new upgrades. I hope considering there is a upkeep cap that at some stage Red Bull will stop developing otherwise I would not understand how they can do that, but let’s see in the next races.

“It could at least be our turn, try to develop the car as much as we can by introducing upgrades and I think it’s not a surprise that we may have a package in Barcelona which will be important for us.

“As usual, I hope the package we are introducing is working as expected and in that case, it can be a good uplift in order to try and reservation up the current gap we’ve got to the Red Bull.”

While Red Bull’s tideway of regular new parts has so far proven salubrious in giving it a slight performance wholesomeness over Ferrari, Binotto says his team doesn’t have the financial topics to do the same.

“We don’t have the money to spend on upgrades at each single race so I think that’s as simple as that. Not considering of reliability but considering of the upkeep cap, so we somehow try to focus the developments on when we believe it’s the right moment and the right spending.”