Vasseur: We did a step forward in Silverstone

In a bid to try and understand what went wrong with their latest upgrade which they introduced in Barcelona, Ferrari ran back to back tests in free practice at Silverstone with the older spec they introduced at Imola, the package they ultimately decided to qualify and race with last weekend.

While Carlos Sainz allowed Ferrari to save face finishing fifth in the British GP, Charles Leclerc was lapped on his way to 14th, but both drivers were outqualified by Haas' Nico Hulkenberg, adding insult to injury.

However, Vasseur is adamant that his team has made a step forward although he admitted that did not show in their result last Sunday afternoon at Silverstone.

Speaking to the media in Silverstone, including GrandPrix247, the Frenchman said: "It is difficult to say after the result but we did a step forward this weekend [Last weekend in Silverstone]. From a technical side, we have a better understanding of the situation on Sunday evening than on Friday morning.

"This is encouraging for the rest of the season," he insisted. "For sure, the result is not ideal because we compromised the result yesterday more than today. Carlos did a solid race and was able to come back at Max [Verstappen] in the first stint and had laps on Max's gearbox on mediums at the beginning of the race.

"On Charles, it was a bit more chaotic. He was stuck behind [Lance] Stroll, was behind - ten seconds - and when we had the first call for the pitstop, it was a bit on the edge and we collectively were a bit too aggressive," he admitted.

Vasseur remains confident that Ferrari can get out of the hole they dug themselves into pointing out that they had similar issues in the 2023 Formula 1 season, and bounced back, but lamented the lack of testing time.

He said: "We had exactly the same situation last year, almost at the same stage of the season - Silverstone, Budapest and Spa.

"We stopped it at Zandvoort, had a good scan of the situation and had a good recovery because the weeks after, we were there.

"What is tough in this situation is you don't have tests, proper tests, to fix it or to at least understand it. It is very difficult as a team to compromise or sacrifice Friday sessions when you know you are losing time during the weekend and say 'ok, let's forget about FP1, FP2 and focus on the mid-term'," he explained.

The Ferrari boss was quizzed regarding the reasons that caused the failure of the latest upgrade package for the SF-24 that became bouncy as a result, he responded: "Correlation is ok, the correlation on the downforce is ok.

"It is still a question mark for everybody and sometimes, the bouncing is popping up like this. It is quite difficult to have correlation because you don't have bouncing in the wind tunnel. We all have metrics and you cannot anticipate you can have more bouncing with this part than another one but to know if it will have a negative impact on performance is another story.

"We changed all the aero parts and the bouncing appeared in Spain," Vasseur answered when asked whether the there was a fundamental design flaw in the SF-24, or it was caused by new aero parts.

"To fix it you have tons of solutions. You have solutions with a compromise on performance, you have solutions without compromise on performance - developing a new package.

"I think we are there now, we will have to have next race with the current car and the sooner the better, we will bring upgrades that have less bouncing," he vowed.

But which spec will Ferrari run in the upcoming Hungarian Grand Prix, Vasseur revealed: "We will have to have a deep analysis of the weekend and consider the fact that Silverstone is by far the most aggressive in terms of bouncing, with very high-speed corners and so on.

"But we will have time to discuss and decide for Budapest," he concluded.