Ferrari duo Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton were coy on the effects its rear suspension upgrade will bring at this weekend’s Formula 1 Belgian Grand Prix.
The Scuderia has implemented the SF-25’s biggest upgrade yet for this weekend’s race, having been afforded a brief test with it last week at Mugello.
Both Leclerc and Hamilton were afforded a handful of laps each for a test that dovetailed with a promotional filming day, meaning a lessening of conclusivity of how well it works.
In theory, the new suspension will be far more rigid than the original, providing a bigger breadth of set-up opportunities, having largely been only able to run the car on higher ride heights due to lower ones causing excessive plank wear.
Despite the desire to have the upgrade in place, Hamilton was reluctant to give too much away, saying there has been little discovered from the Mugello test.
“Oh we didn’t test, it was a photoshoot day basically so did like 10 laps or whatever,” he told media including Motorsport Week.
“It’s 14 laps of filming which was not a test so….”
When asked if this, coupled with the floor upgrade that came in from the Austrian Grand Prix onwards, Hamilton indicated there will be work to do, rather than enjoy any ‘silver bullet’ effect.
“No, I think well firstly we’ll get to test the suspension tomorrow and I’m sure there’s going to be learnings from it, we’ll kind of figure out how to fine-tune it and to try to extract performance from it,” he said. “On the simulator, there’s no difference, but I’m sure across different circuits perhaps there’ll be benefits.
“So I think for me the positive thing is arriving at the filming day where you see that new bits are coming, you see that we are getting development because in general we had an upgraded floor in in Bahrain then it was quite some time before we got another upgrade, I think was Austria.
“So pace-wise wasn’t necessarily to what I would have thought we would have.
“If you look at some of the other teams they bring them small pieces every single weekend like Red Bull often do or Mercedes do for example is where these are more like big chunks along the way.
“I think I was just really happy to see that there clearly is a big push back at the factory, there are a lot of changes and then to see the results of those changes takes time so I was just really grateful to see that we got new parts, we’ll try and put them to use this weekend.”
Leclerc tight-lipped on hopeful ‘step forward’ via upgrade
Leclerc was equally as tight-lipped as Hamilton on the issue, making the point that the team has little time to get to grips with the upgrade due to this weekend’s programme at Spa-Francorchamps including a Sprint Race.
“Yeah, I mean it’s a Sprint weekend so obviously we only have FP1,” he told media including Motorsport Week, “but these are things that…. I mean I’m relatively confident I shouldn’t cause too much too much problems it was in the development and in the programme to put it here since a long time so I’m happy that we are putting it as soon as possible which I hope will give us a step forward and I don’t anticipate any struggles to adapt with it.
A report last week said that Leclerc failed to feel much difference in his brief time in the car at Mugello, and when asked if he had indeed felt anything, he said confirmed this, but shut down any further speculation on the intricacies of the findings at the test.
“We did not and I’m not going to comment [on] the specific behaviours of this suspension,” he said, “obviously these are things that are that remain for us and it will be quite stupid for us to comment it globally on what does what but we’ll find out tomorrow on track.
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