Ferrari was left seeking answers on two fronts after a tricky Friday ahead of the 70th Anniversary Grand Prix.
Once again it was Charles Leclerc leading the charge for the Scuderia at Silverstone, but the Monegasque appears to have his work cut out to keep the midfield at bay for a second straight weekend, after finishing seventh in the afternoon.
Even more worryingly for the Italian team is that position was only possible by using the soft C4 tyres which every team was struggling with in terms of durability.
“It was a bit more difficult than last Friday, to be honest,” Leclerc admitted in reflection.
“We are still working quite hard to try and understand a bit more these tyres.
“We had quite a big step of grip in between the medium and the soft, which is not the case for the others, so we need to understand why we’re a bit too slow on the medium.
“That’s what’s a bit weird for us because normally we struggle to use the softer tyres with our car, but today was a bit different, and we struggled to use the medium tyre more than the others, and we had quite a big step from medium to the soft.”
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If Ferrari can’t find a little more pace on the yellow-striped rubber, there is then the prospect of the team facing a tricky decision in qualifying.
“I think many guys will try to go through on Q2 with a medium tyre, and we need to be competitive on these tyres to have a chance, so we need to put our effort onto that,” Charles explained.
“I think it will be very interesting to see tomorrow after qualifying, which will be the compound for everyone to start on, but it will be an interesting race with many different strategies. Let’s see if it pays off, if we are taking a gamble.”
Across the garage though, a brighter morning gave way to more gloom around Sebastian Vettel as the German ended the day 14th fastest overall.
Then to make matters worse, an engine failure left his car trailing fluid all along the old pit straight before coming to a halt on the inside of Copse.
Problems for Seb in FP2, as his Ferrari came to a halt
He’ll be hoping for a much stronger Saturday! ?#F170 ?? #F1 pic.twitter.com/jM9I50BqIw
— Formula 1 (@F1) August 7, 2020
“[I had] no warning,” the German said. “It was very sudden and obviously a failure so now we have to see what it is. But it will probably take a couple of days because the engine will get shipped back and analysed.”
As for his continued lack of pace…
“We tried a couple of things. Overall we were a bit more satisfied but not really more competitive,” Vettel added.
“We can still try to improve the car but maybe those are small things. The car felt a bit better but we are not really faster. But at least the car feels better.”
