At a time when Ferrari is scratching its head to figure out what exactly is wrong, perhaps Mattia Binotto should ask Lando Norris.
Saturday’s qualifying for the Styrian Grand Prix saw a Ferrari fail to make it out of Q2 for the second week in a row, once in the dry and once in the wet.
Despite bolting a raft of updates onto its SF1000 in time for round two of the championship, the Ferrari is still lacking speed.
Charles Leclerc dropped out of qualifying on Saturday in 11th place, declaring his car undriveable.
That was the same complaint Sebastian Vettel seven days prior when he too finished up in 11th place in qualifying.
Ferrari seems to be a bit lost as to what exactly has gone wrong after the upgrades failed to improve the car’s pace.
Team boss Binotto told The-Race: “In two qualifying sessions, albeit in different conditions, we have not been competitive, not only against those who have been our closest rivals over the past few years, but also against others, who up to yesterday were generally behind us.
“We worked very hard to bring updates to the car earlier than planned, but they didn’t show their worth on track.
“We have to work out why and change this state of affairs, which is just not good enough for a team by the name of Ferrari.
“We mustn’t get het up about it, but we cannot ignore the facts.”
Norris may have an answer.
The McLaren driver was asked for his assessment of the SF1000 and explained that while it is great at cornering, it is too draggy.
Lando: "Ferrari has one of the best cars in terms of cornering. They are really quick in the corners. But they are really slow on the straights. So they have a lot of drag. They got a lot of drag but also a lot of downforce. So basically they are just not very efficient."
— tami. (@Vetteleclerc) July 11, 2020
“Ferrari has one of the best cars in terms of cornering,” he said. “They are really quick in the corners.
“But they are really slow on the straights. So they have a lot of drag. They got a lot of drag but also a lot of downforce.
“So basically they are just not very efficient.”
Not great for Norris’ McLaren team-mate Carlos Sainz given that the Spaniard will be swapping to Ferrari for next year’s championship.
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