Ferrari team principal Maurizio Arrivabene claims the upgrades his team has introduced in Barcelona are “definitely better” than the previous package, despite Sebastian Vettel finishing some 45s off Mercedes’ Nico Rosberg.
The Maranello-based team had entered the Spanish Grand Prix weekend with high ambitions to catch the defending champions, but the race saw the biggest Sunday gap between Mercedes and Ferrari this year.
“The gap to Mercedes is there and we need to analyse all data we have collected to understand,” said Arrivabene.
“We're not blind to the fact that in the last sector we were losing about half a second. I’m not escaping the reality; it’s there. We need to understand, and find how to improve the new package.
Like most teams, Ferrari had geared up for Formula One’s return to Europe by bringing a major raft of car developments to Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.
But these did not prove as efficient as expected, especially with Kimi Raikkonen who elected to revert to the car’s old specification after struggling on the latest package.
However, Arrivabene remains confident Ferrari’s new evolutions are a step forward compared to the SF15-T that won this year’s Malaysian Grand Prix and came close to repeat the feat in Bahrain.
“The comparison between our two cars is there: Sebastian’s car was going very well. We need to prove, versus Kimi’s, that the new solutions are working.
“The new package is definitely better than the old one.
“The numbers that we have in terms of comparison are telling us that the solutions are good, the reality is telling us that these are not good enough.”
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