'Ferrari has B-version of car ready in Barcelona'

A battle for the world title seems unthinkable for Ferrari this year. After three races, Charles Leclerc is in tenth place, Carlos Sainz currently shares fifth place, and the team is in fourth place among constructors, with a 30-point gap to the front. Therefore, internally, the team is working hard to make changes to ensure it can still make some headway in the rest of the season.

Three-step plan formed after first few races

A crucial change is a switch to the 'downwashed sidepods', the sidepod design introduced by Red Bull last year and now adopted by almost the entire field in several forms. For the time being, Ferrari had stubbornly persisted with its own sidepod design, jokingly called a bathtub because of its wide, bowl-shaped design. Earlier, it was announced that Ferrari would introduce these downwashed sidepods at Imola, but that will now be pushed forward two races to Barcelona.

In the meantime, other changes have also taken place. At the next race in Baku, a new diffuser will be fitted, and in two races time in Imola, the rear suspension will be taken care of. And another two races later in Barcelona, then with the sidepods, the new design will be complete. This roadmap was drawn up after it became clear in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia that the current choices were not working. In Australia, Ferrari had then gathered enough information to determine what the exact problems were, so the team could start working on the upgrades over the next few weeks.