Ferrari’s development plan explained after ‘B car’ ruled out

The Italian outfit have endured their worst start to an F1 season since 2009, scoring just 26 points across the opening three races, leaving them fourth in the constructors’ championship and nearly 100 points adrift of Red Bull. 

Amid Red Bull’s continued domination and Aston Martin’s remarkable winter turnaround, Ferrari have slipped back in F1’s pecking order and are yet to finish on the podium. 

Ferrari’s lacklustre performance led Carlos Sainz to claim the team need to consider a major rethink to have any chance of bridging the gap to early pace-setters Red Bull. 

"At the moment the Red Bull is superior everywhere," Sainz said at the Australian Grand Prix. "It's superior in quali, in races, in straightline speed.

"They are superior in medium/low-speed corners, they are superior with tyre management, superior over the kerbs and bumps. It just shows that we clearly need to change something.

"We need to go and check something very different from where we are now. I think the extremely good performance at the start of last season made us, I think, keep pushing with this concept, with this project of car.

"But I think we realise now that Red Bull has a clear advantage everywhere and that we need to start looking to our right and to our left."

But team principal Fred Vasseur poured cold water on suggestions that Ferrari could develop a “completely different” car this season. 

"We have a flow of updates that will come, not for Baku, because we have the aero package for the level of downforce, and with the sprint race it is not the easiest one, but for Miami, Imola, not Monaco, and Barcelona. At each race, we'll have an update on the car,” Vasseur told media including Crash.net. 

"We are sticking to the plan. We have made some adjustments in terms of balance and behaviour, and it was much better in Melbourne, and we'll continue in this direction.

"It's not a B-car if that is what you want to say. We won't come with something completely different. We will continue to update this one and we'll try to update massively.”

Vasseur, who took a swipe at Red Bull’s “very light” punishment for breaking the F1 cost cap, admitted the sport’s strict financial and aerodynamic testing regulations make it “very difficult” for teams to make radical changes. 

“With the restriction in the wind tunnel if you have to start from scratch, I don’t want to say that it makes no sense, but it is very difficult,” he said. “It means that we will adapt due to the circumstances.

“We will speed up. We will put all the resources to speed up the process and the updates that were planned for Barcelona will come in Imola and we will have one or two races the update in advance. But you can’t change massively something in the course of the season.”