Ferrari admit Austria struggles as Lewis Hamilton concedes: "Not as competitive as we would like"

After Hamilton's breakthrough victory in Barcelona and Ferrari's latest power unit development, expectations were high heading to Spielberg. Instead, Friday exposed weaknesses in both straight-line speed and cornering performance, leaving Ferrari trailing Mercedes and McLaren.

Hamilton finished P5 in both practice sessions, while Leclerc, who missed FP1 after Ferrari handed rookie Dino Beganovic another mandatory outing, ended FP2 eighth after completing the highest mileage of the session with 35 laps.

Hamilton felt the SF-26 had promise but admitted the team had not yet found the right setup: "I'd say it was a solid but challenging start to the weekend, with the high temperatures making an already demanding circuit even tougher.

"The car felt quite positive straight out of the box, but this track is pretty unforgiving, so that even a small balance issue costs you a lot of lap time. We've definitely got some work to do to find the right setup and balance and unlock some performance.

"It's all about staying focused, understanding where we're losing out and seeing what we can do ahead of tomorrow," added the seven time Formula 1 World Champion.

Leclerc painted an even more concerning picture after returning to the cockpit for the afternoon session: "We gathered quite a lot of data, which gives us useful insight into the areas of our car which we can still work on improving tonight.

"We were not as competitive as we would have liked to be right now, and our focus is on taking steps forward in refining our performance so that we can challenge our competitors tomorrow," Leclerc said.

Speaking afterwards, the Monegasque admitted Ferrari's problems extended beyond simply missing the opening practice session: "It's not been an easy Friday I think, but not particularly from me," he explained. "Yes of course I missed FP1 and that's never ideal, but you can still recover from a few less laps in FP1.

"I think just as a team we don't seem to be very competitive for now, so there's a lot of work to be done on the car in order to make sure that we get back to a more reasonable place. But we'll analyse and work very hard tonight, and hopefully tomorrow we can do a big step forward."

Leclerc also revealed Ferrari had been surprised by its lack of pace through the corners, an area that has normally been one of the SF-26's strengths: "As we've said I think yesterday, the straights are quite a lot and we are losing so much time down the straights.

"I think maybe we are a bit negatively surprised by our performance in the corners at the moment, because in the corners normally we are competitive and we are not that competitive at the moment, so this is the part to fix."

Team principal Fred Vasseur agreed Ferrari had endured a difficult day: "We struggled a little bit with the conditions, a bit extreme – the altitude, the temperature. It's the same for everybody but it's not fitting very well to us. It is like it is. We have the night to correct, to be ready for tomorrow, to put everything together. Let's try to do a better job on Saturday."

Vasseur also played down expectations surrounding Ferrari's latest ADUO-assisted power unit upgrade: "We knew about ADUO two weeks ago or one week ago. You can't expect to [take] a huge step forward. We put a new engine in and it's another decent step."

The Ferrari boss insisted the team's focus must remain on extracting the maximum from its package rather than worrying about rivals.

"So far we are far away from our potential," he concluded. "It means that we have to work on ourselves, to be focused on ourselves [instead of] thinking about the others, and to try and put everything together."

With Mercedes setting the pace through Andrea Kimi Antonelli and McLaren also looking competitive, Ferrari faces an important overnight turnaround if Hamilton and Leclerc are to fight near the front when qualifying begins on Saturday afternoon.