Ferrari boss Mattia Binotto claims their renewed competitive was not solely down to a single upgrade in Singapore.
After spending much of the European season as the third-fastest team, the Italian squad shocked everyone by leading the pack in Singapore and backing it up with the fastest car in Sochi.
This as a result of making great strides with their chassis, which had been the weak link against Mercedes and Red Bull, although it appears now the current car will be largely untouched until Abu Dhabi.
“We are really focused now mainly on next year’s car back at the factory and any [more] updates this season would not be as major as the one we had in Singapore,” Binotto told Crash.net.
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The Ferrari chief then offered a summary of the process which resulted in the Scuderia seemingly once again becoming viable challengers to Mercedes.
“Since I think Spain certainly at first our performance was very poor on maximum downforce circuits and low-speed cornering,” he explained.
“I think we put a lot of effort internally to try and understand what was the weakness of the car, the behaviour of the tyres and try to set the direction for development.
“The direction for the development has been continuous, I have to say because it’s not only Singapore we brought new parts, we brought some earlier in other races and what we have achieved in Singapore has been the sum of everything.
“It’s not only aero, certainly with the aero we have addressed one of the weaknesses we had got,” Binotto added.
“But I think it has been coming through as well a good understanding of the car, finding the right compromise on the balance and the set-up, and I think altogether really it’s car understanding and set-up and aero that is important going forwards.”
Perhaps the biggest test of Ferrari’s progress will come this weekend at Suzuka as the sweeping corners test every aspect of the updated design.