It was a quiet Friday for Scuderia Ferrari F1 at the 2026 Austrian GP. While none of the three drivers employed today – Charles Leclerc, Dino Beganovic and Lewis Hamilton, managed to secure a flashy top three result, the Italian outlet definitely shouldn’t be excluded from the top podium contenders for the main event on Sunday.
In fact, the same situation had happened during the latest round in Barcelona, which had ultimately led to Lewis Hamilton’s first race win with Ferrari.
Leclerc not coy about actual Ferrari F1 pace ahead of Austrian GP
Charles Leclerc only had one hour of track time today at the Red Bull Ring, as he left his challenger in FP1 to Ferrari Driver Academy driver Dino Beganovic. While his teammate ended the fragmented session in the top 5, the Monegasque’ pace was only good enough for P8.
Overall, the Ferrari driver wasn’t the most satisfied with his car no.16 following Practice for the F1 Austrian GP, in spite of the upgrades introduced, as he summed up his day.
“Not so confident, but I mean, never say never. But it’s true that at the moment, on the Friday of Barcelona, there were a few elements that led us to think that there was quite a bit of performance in the car.
“At the moment it’s been a struggle, the whole FP1 that I didn’t do, but as a team I obviously followed FP1, and also FP2 inside the car. So, it’s been a difficult Friday for the team, and we’ll try and put everything together and see what we can recover tomorrow.”
Not another Barcelona
Leclerc, fourth in the F1 championship standings, went into further details about his issues, specifying the lack of feeling and highlighting the fact that he is not actually concerned by tyre degradation.
“Just overall grip, we’ve been sliding from all four tyres since the first lap I’ve done. So for that it’s been very, very tricky, and just a very open balance in general.
“It’s tricky, I mean in Barcelona it was very difficult as well. Here you’ve got different limitations, but at the end of the day tyre management will play as much of a role. As it did in Barcelona, in Barcelona we were on the good side of things.”
In fact, the Ferrari driver admitted that among the best on-track moments of his day, late race simulation pace had to be included.
“I think in terms of actual degradation, we are not in a bad place here. The bigger problem is that the pace is not there. So, maybe after 20 laps we are fast, but 20 laps is not good. We’ve got to do some work on the car.”
Ultimately Leclerc wants to lower expectations following the ADUO upgrade introduction
Leclerc also mentioned the power unit upgrades introduced by the Italian manufacturer in light of their ADUO allowance ahead of the Austrian round. While he reckons the fact that reliability can’t be found in one day, he wanted to highlight the hard and lengthy work that the Maranello engineering team has put in toward this upgrade.
“We don’t expect magic bullets either, unfortunately. There has been a massive amount of work in the background to make sure the upgraded engine was ready for now. We kind of expected to be on the ADUO looking at the track we had.
“So we obviously made sure that we were ready for that first race to put it straight on the car. It’s not a revolution, but it’s a step in the right direction. And that really shows the mentality of the team, of trying to put everything together and really pushing the limits of the development to make sure that we don’t leave anything behind.”
Vasseur warns not to put too much faith in the ADUO upgrades
Ferrari Team Principal Fred Vasseur as well explained the lack of feeling encountered by his drivers through the day ahead of the F1 Austrian GP. However, he is confident that their performance can improve before Qualifying, with an additional Practice session to test out potential setups.
“Today we struggled a little bit with the conditions, I think a bit like Barcelona. [We struggled] with altitude, with temperature, with track temperature, air temperature. I think that is the same for everybody, but we struggled a lot. We have to work on ourselves, to work on the set-up, on the car, on the driving, on everything to do a better job tomorrow.
“The deg in Barcelona was much higher and it was the main driver for the performance, at least in the race. But we were also able to fight for the pole position in Qualifying, meaning that at least in terms of pure potential we were there.”
Hard work will be pivotal in securing another top finish
Just like in the previous round in Montmeló, Ferrari, and especially Hamilton, had been able to build on the data collected during the earlier sessions to maximise the potential of the SF-26.
“Now, so far we are far away, but it’s true that in Barcelona we are not so shiny, also on Friday. Let’s work, that’s for sure. We have a lot of potential to unlock tonight and we’ll see tomorrow.”
The Frenchman concluded his interview by praising the hard work conducted by the team, as well as the daring approach of investing in early-onset development.
“I was expecting what we get. No, but the lead time on the engine is huge. On some components you have months of delay. It was very risky for us to launch the ADUO, at least the spec 2 of the engine, very early for cost cap reason. We were not expecting at all a big step this weekend.”
