Sebastian Vettel frustration grows as Ferrari upgrade fails to pay off

French GP

Vettel frustration grows as Ferrari upgrade fails to pay off

A far from ideal start to the weekend.

Matthew Scott

Saturday 22 June 2019 08:04

A frustrating Friday at the French Grand Prix for Ferrari only grew more fretful, as Sebastian Vettel admitted that the Scuderia's upgrade package for Paul Ricard did not work as well as hoped. Ferrari brought a new front wing to Le Castellet, as well as a new floor, but some elements have seemingly been deemed unusable in the race.

Mercedes were one and two in both FP1 and FP2, even though Lewis Hamilton spun on his flying lap in the afternoon session.

Vettel trailed Charles Leclerc in both sessions on Friday and confirmed that the performance gains he had been expecting in France largely failed to materialise.

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The discovery will have only served to darken the mood in the Scuderia garage after the FIA ruled that they would not review Vettel's Canadian Grand Prix penalty, confirming his second-place finish behind Hamilton.

Summing up how the new parts felt, Vettel told reporters: "Not so good, to be honest, [there is] a lot of work ahead of us.

"[They] didn't bring what we were expecting, so we'll see what we can try and find overnight, to maybe be a bit better off tomorrow."

Ferrari team principal confirmed that some of the parts would not be used over the course of the weekend.

"We brought here some parts which were important for us to test to understand the direction of development," he said.

"We tested a few parts, some of them will be kept on the car for the rest of the weekend so it is not an entire package that has been cancelled or not.

"A few parts will be kept and considered positive, and the ones that have been removed are considered part of our test plan but not intended to be raced for the weekend."