2026 Scuderia Ferrari HP F1 Team

[sucof]

I think the point went past you. Why would it be stupid, if true? They may have used up most of the budget intended for this year's car. Most of what remains is allocated to 2027's. It was only in the last race they were somewhat competitive, with Russel racing with a botched front wing setting and Antonelli retiring.
It remains to be seen what will the pecking order be after Mercedes and McLaren brings significant updates.

It would be "stupid" because upgrade packages are not limited mainly by equipment or money, rather than Time.
Meaning, it is the time they need the most to develop the aero, so if you use your money quickly, you will have your engineers sitting still and looking out the window for the rest of the year instead of improving the car.
Hence a more balanced rythm of the updates makes your car faster overall.
Engineers also need to see the results, changes their latest ideas has caused to learn for the next update.
They also need the time to see the development of other cars, to stay up to date with their ideas.
You throw all those away if you spend your money in the beginning of the season.
But it is easy anyways, teams work like this if you look around. Some even decided to wait longer.

This is just your idealization. If they decide it's not worth spending more time and money on this car they can work on the next car. Engineers certainly won't sitting around idle in any case...

omg... it was just an exaggeration to illustrate my point...
If you would think a bit, would never have thought otherwise, as I was talking about how the time of the engineers are the most important...
Nevermind...............

[Luscion]

Q: Hi Fred, just take us through how that first day of action has gone from from your side.

Fred Vasseur: Yeah it was a tough Friday that we struggled a little bit with the conditions, a bit extreme, the attitude, the temperature, it's the same for everybody but it's not fitting very well to us but it is like it is that we have the night to correct, to be ready for tomorrow, to put everything together and let's try to do a better job on Saturday.

Q: And I know obviously we were talking ahead of this weekend about the PU update that's come in for you guys, is there a sense of how much it's given you, where it's at?

Vasseur: We knew about ADUO two weeks ago or one week ago that you can't expect to have a huge step forward, we put a new engine for sure but it's not a decent step.

Q: And in terms of the rest of the weekend, obviously it was a very special one last time out, but what are the hopes, what are the targets, what can you really hope to achieve?

Vasseur: To do our best, as usual, we'll see the outcome on Sunday evening but so far we are far away of our potential, it means that we have to work on ourselves, to be focused on ourselves, not to think about the others and to try to put everything together.

[f1316]

The pace in practice didn’t look especially strong (confirmed by Fred) but if last week is anything to go by, they may have shifted their approach to showing their hand less early in the weekend. Last week the FP2 long runs were the first sign of improvement so let’s see what these say.

It’s not surprising if the new PU is being bedded in and run very conservatively (for multiple reasons). But the handling didn’t look especially strong either, so seems like there’s work to do overnight. I still feel optimistic that the pace should be there if they can put it all together.