Ferrari has admitted FIA technical directives issued over complaints about their 2019 engine have led to a drop in performance this year.

Following victories in Spa, Monza and Singapore, as well as a streak of pole positions, both Mercedes and Red Bull began to seek clarifications on various tricks they understood the Italian team to be using for more power.

The first results of that came in Austin last year, when Ferrari suddenly lost their straight-line speed advantage, and has now seen the Scuderia fall as much as 50 horsepower behind, according to some claims, after having to alter their power unit design for 2020. 

"The regulations are very difficult and complex," team boss Mattia Binotto told reporters on Friday in Hungary.

"There are areas of regulations on the power unit where maybe clarifications are still required. It's an ongoing process, which has always existed in the past and will exist in the future.

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"Since last year a lot of technical directives have been released, eventually clarifying some of the areas of regulations, I think through those TDs we had to adapt ourselves.

"I don't think it is only the case of Ferrari [being impacted] because looking at the power output of this season I think most manufacturers somehow had to adapt themselves," he stated, "but certainly, as Ferrari, we had to adapt and as a simple output of that, we lost some of the performance we had.

"I think that now we've got a clearer situation in some areas of the regulations and that will continue if required for the future."

To make the situation worse for Ferrari, all development has now been frozen on the engines until next year, meaning the team is stuck with its current reduced performance for the whole season.

"The engine or power unit development is an ongoing process that we have never stopped since 2012, when we started developing those engines," Binotto said.

"Now it is a long time we were developing them. We were doing development as well for this season that we will not be able to introduce during the season itself due to the long shutdown period which has not been the case for all the power unit manufacturers.

"We will still develop and we try to somehow develop as much as we can by the start of next season," he added.

"I think there are still areas of the regulations that need to be clarified and hopefully, that may be so that in the future there is sufficient clarity to make sure we have all the same understanding."