Ferrari makes alarming ‘pure power’ admission despite F1 engine upgrade
Ferrari has made a frank admission about the performance of its F1 engine.
Ferrari is still missing “pure power” compared to the Mercedes-powered cars despite introducing an engine upgrade at the Italian Grand Prix, according to its Formula 1 team principal Fred Vasseur.
Hopes and expectations were high for Ferrari heading into its home race at Monza with the Italian squad bringing its second and final engine upgrade of the season.
But Ferrari still proved to be slower than the Mercedes-powered cars on the straights, with straight-line speed remaining the Scuderia’s biggest weakness.
It proved to be an Italian Grand Prix to forget for Ferrari as Lewis Hamilton could only finish sixth after first-lap context with team-mate Charles Leclerc, who crashed out at the end of the second lap.
After a hugely disappointing race on home soil, Vasseur conceded Ferrari is still lagging behind its main F1 rival in terms of engine performance.
"When you have a lack of pure power, then you start to play with deployment, to try to compensate in the straight line,” Vasseur said. "But if you deploy more somewhere, for sure you will deploy less somewhere else. Then you are going in the wrong spiral to try to play with this when you are fighting.
"Honestly, it's not about deployment. Even McLaren, they were playing a little bit Friday and Saturday morning. In the end, we are missing pure power.”
Ferrari cannot make further upgrades to the hardware of its power unit this season but is in line to bring updates in 2027, thanks to being deemed to be more than four per cent behind the benchmark engine.
According to the FIA’s ADUO rankings system that is Red Bull, but it is accepted in the paddock that Mercedes has the best complete power unit package.
“The process of the engine is mega long. The chassis you can make an upgrade from one day to the other very quickly and come back into the pace," Vasseur explained.
"On the engine, the process is mega long because the lead time of the parts is long and the cost cap is not easy - you have to produce the engine for the season.
"And if you want to start to do the development, you have to produce a new batch of engines. We are not expecting to recover with ADUO 1 or ADUO 2. We are doing small steps.
"If you make a small step on the engine, keep in mind that behind us, it was hundredths of a second. In terms of position, even if you make a couple of horsepower, it's a good step on the grid. Now we will have a new engine next year. For sure, the target is to catch up as soon as possible.”
Vasseur insisted Ferrari is heading into this weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix in Madrid determined to bounce back “much stronger” from a “failed” weekend at Monza.
"We will come to Madrid with all the energy that we need to do a good result,” he said. "It's true that Monza, for us, even if I spend the week to say that it's a normal race, it's not, as you can imagine.
“With all the Tifosi, we were expecting to give them something else as a big thank you for the support and the enthusiasm that they have. We all have the feeling to have failed something, but be sure that we will come back much stronger."
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