No more ‘fake pace’ from Ferrari

Editor

If team principal Maurizio Arrivabene gets his way, then Ferrari will be running Friday practice sessions on full tanks in future.

Mercedes remain the pacesetters in Formula 1, but Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen often appear to be a lot closer during the first two practice sessions, often topping the timesheets.

However, they usually fall away both in qualifying and on race day with the Merc drivers taking all eight pole positions so far this season and winning seven races.

Arrivabene believes his Scuderia outfit would be better off showing their true pace on Fridays.

"My analysis is that it depends on how much fuel Mercedes have compared to us," he is quoted as saying by Autosport.

"I said to the engineers that it's better to go on Friday with a full full tank so we can see a correct comparison instead of seeing a fake one."

Although Merc completed yet another 1-2 finish in Austria with Nico Rosberg leading Lewis Hamilton home, Arrivabene insists the team are not "that far away".

"As soon as the tyres went into [the right] temperature we were more or less two tenths slower than [Lewis] Hamilton," he said. "The gap from [Nico] Rosberg was bigger but it depends on a lot of factors.

"We were not that far away in the race.

"It's the downforce, it's the traction, they are all issues we are working on to be solved.

"I don't want to use an excuse – it's a challenge on us to work better and make sure we are very very good."