Ferrari Team Principal Mattia Binotto has stressed that the outfit will never give up on its Formula 1 title prospects, in spite of another defeat to Mercedes, this time at the Spanish Grand Prix.
Ferrari was comprehensively beaten at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya in both qualifying and race trim, as its championship hopes took another blow.
Sebastian Vettel challenged the Mercedes drivers at the start but a heavy lock-up into Turn 1 compromised his prospects and he slipped to fourth.
Team-mate Charles Leclerc was in contention for the podium places but ultimately came home in fifth spot for the fourth time this year.
Ferrari now trails Mercedes by 96 points in the Constructors’ Championship.
“On our side we can work very hard and very well as well,” said Binotto.
“The season is still long and we will never give up. That is our approach.
“There is much to learn from here. We are disappointed about the race and the performance during the weekend. Our hope was to deliver more.
“We brought some upgrades, aero and engine, here and we were expecting to somehow be in the fight, but it has not been the case.
“The upgrades worked well, power-wise, straight-line speed we are good enough, but certainly we have some weaknesses on the car that were highlighted this weekend.
“It is up to us to assess and to improve in the future. It can only make us stronger in the future – that is the final story of this weekend.”
Ferrari’s weakest sector at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya was the final one, comprised of a handful of slow- and medium-speed corners.
When asked to explain Ferrari’s performance deficit in the corners, Binotto replied: “Right now we are losing a lot in each corner not only in the last sector.
“Each single corner we are slow with quite a lot of understeer.
“That is not only downforce, we have seen something in the data which we need to analyse and understand so I think an early conclusion today would be a wrong conclusion.
“We need a fix on this, but we need a proper analysis and try to understand the matter of balance, the matter of downforce and maybe even tyre concepts.
“I think we do not have the answer and I would not like to go through it yet.”
