Ferrari will take an “aggressive” and “attacking” approach to the final four races of the season as it chases its first drivers’ title since 2007.
The Italian team has led the WDC for much of the season thanks to Fernando Alonso but recently lost that advantage following a resurgent Red Bull and Sebastian Vettel – who now leads by six points.
This means Ferrari must attack the final races if it’s to close that gap, according to chief designer Nicholas Tombazis.
“Because we don’t currently enjoy an advantage, either in terms of performance or as far as the points situation is concerned, we cannot defend, we must attack and adopt an aggressive approach to car development.”
Tombazis confirmed Ferrari would likely bring large upgrades to each of the remaining four grands prix in the hope they can stem the gap to Red Bull, who have made major progress since the Italian GP, whilst Ferrari’s pace has been confused by “unpleasant surprises.”
“In the last few races, our progress has not matched our expectations and various components which we expected would make our car more competitive did not do so,” added Tombazis.
“One element that slowed our progress was the difficulty we encountered in the correlation with data from the wind tunnel and that from the track.
“We had some unpleasant surprises from some of the updates we brought to the last couple of races.”
The team is now using the Toyota facility in Germany to develop its car after confirming it would shut its own unit down over the winter period to upgrade it.
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