Ferrari need a morale boost and the upcoming races offer the chance to achieve it, Formula 1 motorsport director Ross Brawn claims.
The Italian team endured their worst race of the season so far in Hungary, finishing a minute behind race winner Lewis Hamilton despite a third and fourth place for Sebastian Vettel and Charles Leclerc respectively.
It was a weekend which largely summed up the Scuderia’s season of falling well short of expectations, but Brawn does think the summer and what comes after it, can give Ferrari hope.
“The summer break has probably come at just the right time because I’m well aware of how the pressure can build on Ferrari when things aren’t going well,” he wrote in his post-race column after Budapest.
“It won’t do any harm to take a breather and recharge the batteries.
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“Then, once the racing starts again, the aero requirements of Spa and Monza could put Vettel and Leclerc right in the fight again, considering the aero efficiency of their cars.
“Ferrari badly needs a win, not so much for their championship aspirations, but as a morale booster, to prove that it has the potential to be a championship contender, an obligation it has always been under.”
And it is that notion of trying to build some momentum and optimism for 2020 which means team boss Mattia Binotto won’t give up on this year just yet.
“Should we concentrate [entirely] on next year’s car? I don’t think so,” he is quoted by F1i.com.
“Not only because having the same regulations next year, whatever we can do this year will be a good benefit for next year’s car as well.
“There are still many races and, so far, no victory for Ferrari, so I think we have a goal and a target and I think we should do whatever we can to finish this season to do our best.”
The key, Binotto believes, is trying to solve their downforce deficit which is limiting their performance at so many circuits.
“I think what we should try to explain is not the minute [to Hamilton] in Hungary, but how it is possible that just a week ago [in Germany] we had the fastest car, and today we are somehow not the fastest,” he said.
“Here, as we often say, is very track dependent. We know that our car is somehow lacking maximum downforce and when you are somehow on a circuit like Budapest where maximum downforce is required, then we are certainly suffering.
“Obviously there are circuits where we are not running to the maximum downforce configurations, so in that case, it will be different,” the Swiss noted.
“Certainly we are seeking more downforce already on this current season, and in the second half of the season we will put whatever max downforce we can on the car and the car next year will require even more.
“We know that our competitors as well are developing their cars for next year on more downforce, so we cannot consider the gap of today as the single target. It has to be more than that.”