Montezemolo: Ferrari is strong and winning again

On the eve of the team’s departure for Budapest, at what is a crucial moment in the season, Ferrari President, Luca di Montezemolo chose to send it an encouraging message. “With all the comments made recently, most of them misguided, there is only one clear and concrete truth: Ferrari is strong and winning again. That is what I, everyone in the company and our fans wanted.”

Everyone at Ferrari was naturally delighted with the fantastic one-two finish in the German Grand Prix last Sunday, which proved assertions that the car had improved considerably over the past few races, even if the results had been lacking. While the quickest car outright in qualifying was still a blue Red Bull, the next two cars on the grid were both red and, in race conditions, it seemed that the Cavallino was quicker than the Bull. It certainly eased the task of packing up the cars and equipment as quickly as possible after the race, as the team transporters headed immediately for Hungary.

The engineers returned to Maranello to begin planning for the twelfth round of the championship, in the spirit of keeping the development momentum moving forward, to close the gap to the leaders in both classifications, before flying out to Budapest on Thursday. The German result is also gratifying because a few days after the Hungarian Grand Prix, all work stops at Maranello, as indeed it does for the other teams, during the compulsory Formula 1 shut-down, prior to the following round in Belgium, when more updates can be expected on the car.

Meanwhile, the mechanics headed immediately for Budapest, where work on preparing the cars began on Tuesday. The F10s will therefore be essentially to the same specification as in Hockenheim, apart from a few minor updates on the aero front, although they will be set up with more downforce to deal with the requirements of the Hungarian track, where almost all corners are slow to medium speed. Bridgestone brings its Super Soft and Medium compounds this weekend and they have usually been well suited to the Ferrari F10, as was demonstrated in Bahrain, Canada, Valencia and Monaco. However, the use of dry tyres does not seem to be guaranteed for much of the weekend: currently the forecast is for some rain on Friday, thunderstorms on Saturday, with drier conditions prevailing on race day, which sounds like a very similar scenario to the German GP weekend, rather than the inferno of heat that usually characterises this event.