Hungarian Grand Prix – Ferrari’s Mattia Binotto has confirmed the team will run more new aerodynamic updates on their SF90 this weekend.
In an effort to close the gap on the dominant Mercedes team, Ferrari have been rolling out aerodynamic updates at almost every single race since the Spanish Grand Prix. With their power unit and ERS believed to be on par or even better than the Mercedes, Ferrari’s weak point this year has been in the corners. As a result, the team have concentrated hard on that through the summer and seem to have made good progress.
Germany suggested that, in the dry, the Ferrari was the fastest car. Heading to the much slower, and tortuously twisty, Hungaroring in Budapest, team boss Mattia Binotto says this weekend could provide the team with evidence that they have found performance over the last few months: “It will be important to see if this race provides further confirmation that our car has improved on various types of track.”
“We will be able to count on the various elements we introduced recently, as well as some aerodynamic updates.”
As the last race before the summer shutdown and having explained the reliability issues that affected both cars during qualifying in Germany as being anomalous, Binotto said: “Of course, we are focusing on resolving our recent reliability problems to ensure they do not occur again.”
“Budapest is a track where cooling is usually an important factor and where cars run in maximum downforce configuration. The tyres come under a lot of stress, because of the type of corners and that even applies over a single lap in qualifying.”
Since the Hungarian Grand Prix’s introduction back in 1986, Ferrari have won the event on seven occasions. Ferrari’s most recent 1-2 came at the 2017 Hungarian race, courtesy of Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen.