Ferrari has announced their first upgrade of the Formula 1 season ahead of two races earlier than what they had planned before. Spanish Grand Prix will see the newly upgraded Ferrari with enhanced specification and performance.
The Italian team has earlier planned to introduced maiden engine upgrade of the season at Canadian Grand Prix with its second specification power plant.
However, Ferrari choose Barcelona and scheduled the upgrade at the coming race on April 20th, 2019. The team is cooperating with its technical partner for this upgrade, where a new lubricant will be introduced.
Earlier, Honda introduced their first engine upgrade ahead of their schedule. Now Ferrari has also announced to reschedule their plans of up-gradation.
Honda introduced their first upgrade with Spec 2 engine at Azerbaijan in-order to avoid any reliability issues which they had diagnosed in the previous races of this season. However, Ferrari decision is based on rectifying their performance gaps.
Mercedes is leading the constructor championship with 74 points leads on its competitor Ferrari, because the team managed to win first four races with top two positions on the podium.
Ferrari is trying to reduce this performance gaps. For this particular reason the team has already introduced changes to bargeboards and rear wing at Azerbaijan Grand Prix. These changes will be complimented by the engine up-gradation at Spain.
Mattia Binotto, Ferrari Team principal, said: “We are currently behind in the championship and we have to catch up, which we know means that our development work will be the key to this season.
“Having brought a new aerodynamic package to Baku, we will also bring some developments in this area to Barcelona.
“On top of that, we will have a new power unit that we are introducing ahead of schedule, as the second specification was due to be brought to Canada.
“Shell, in close collaboration with our team, has developed a different formulation of race lubricant that will also be introduced with the new power unit, delivering increased performance.
“It’s only down to a big team effort with everyone pushing hard to make up ground that we have been able to bring these developments forward.”
