Ferrari told to focus on improving weaknesses to avoid more struggles

Ferrari boss Maurizio Arrivabene admits Silverstone is unlikely to be the last track they struggle on this season, but has defended the team's development rate.

Although Sebastian Vettel ultimately returned the Scuderia to the podium for the first time in three races at the rain-hit British GP after timing the switch to intermediate tyres to perfection, Arrivabene said Ferrari’s glass was still “half empty” following a race weekend in which they had been outperformed by both Mercedes and Williams in dry conditions.

Ferrari’s form at Silverstone prompted suggestions that they are falling further behind the leading pace, but Arrivabene said the nature of the fast, flowing Silverstone track, rather like the Circuit de Catalunya for the Spanish GP in May, didn’t suit the SF15-T and the onus was on the team to improve the car's weakest areas.

“If you look at Barcelona, it was more or less the same story. I’m not finding any excuses because this is something I said the last time in Austria, we are going to have tracks that are in our favour and other tracks where we are struggling,” the team principal conceded.

“The reality is that I would like our people to be concentrated on the weaknesses instead to look on the strengths.”

Since beating the Mercedes in a straight fight at the season’s season round in Malaysia and then challenging the world champions again for much of the following race in China, Ferrari have increasingly found themselves in a fight with Williams and Silverstone was the first time in 2015 that neither Sebastian Vettel nor Kimi Raikkonen qualified on the grid’s second row.

Ferrari’s disappointing Silverstone came despite the team introducing a new front-wing and changes to the aerodynamics around the car’s rear brake ducts for the race weekend. Arrivabene, however, bristled at suggestions that the team’s latest upgrade had been any more significant than others.

“We have normal development on the car. As I said many, many times, and I reconfirm one more time, the development is going through all the year,” he said.

“It’s not something [going] on the car altogether. The upgrades that we had here they are like the little one we had that we had in Austria and that one that’s coming for Hungary.

[With] the methodology it’s important to do a good job. So instead of putting 10,000 things altogether into the car you put certain things and measure [their success]. If they are working well you do a step forward, otherwise you lose it.”