A hard lesson for Scuderia Ferrari

“Today was a difficult day, but we have confidence in our team and our car, so there is no reason to panic and turn the whole world upside down. » The sentence of Sebastian Vettel wants to be optimistic at the end of a British Grand Prix where the Team Ferrari, however, had a very discreet race, with Kimi Räikkönen moving up to fifth position, far from the Mercedes and Red Bull, much more lively than the SF16-H at Silverstone.

If the Finn “saved the furniture” for the Italian clan, Vettel again encountered a gearbox problem, and was penalized by five places on the grid, just like in Sochi in Russia or in Austria the weekend before Silverstone.

A spin in the race, and a five-second penalty for forcing Felipe Massa (Williams), to go out of bounds of the track, came to disrupt the progression of the quadruple German world champion, who had already called a burst of Italian training, to regain performance after qualifying, where the SF16-Hs had been dominated by the Red Bull RB12s.

“Now we need to understand where we are giving up time, specifies Vettel. We have a lot to learn from a weekend like this. It is clear today we are not as competitive as in other races, but at least we recovered some points. And that was the only race of the year where we weren't able to beat the Red Bulls in terms of race pace. »

The mixed result of the Italian team does not overly surprise Team Principal Maurizio Arrivabene, even if for the latter, the lack of performance with the Scuderia rivals appeared more clearly on the English track.

“We knew before coming here that it would not be an easy track for us, comments the Transalpine. But if you want to be at the forefront, complicated routes don't have to exist. It's a circuit which, engine aspect aside, emphasizes other factors that we have been lacking. Now we must turn the page, and look towards Hungary taking into account the hard lesson of the Silverstone meeting. »

Find the full report and analysis of the British Grand Prix, produced by our special correspondents at Silverstone, in issue 2071 of AUTOhebdo, available from 22 p.m. this evening in digital version, and from this Wednesday on newsstands.