{"id":257801,"date":"2026-05-04T15:14:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T15:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/257801\/"},"modified":"2026-05-04T15:14:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T15:14:11","slug":"ferrari-facing-upgrade-concern-after-miami-package-fails-to-deliver-expected-performance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/257801\/","title":{"rendered":"Ferrari Facing Upgrade \u201cConcern\u201d After Miami Package Fails to Deliver Expected Performance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ferrari<\/a> arrived in Miami with no fewer than 11 new<\/a> parts on its SF-26, the most extensive upgrade list of any team on the grid. They left with sixth and a seventh place finishes. That gap between ambition and outcome was what they drove home with following the race, and it has the team\u2019s fans worried.<\/p>\n

F1 journalist Lawrence Barretto, speaking on the F1 Nation podcast<\/a>, discussed the feeling in the Scuderia garage<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWhat was generally felt within the team this weekend is they\u2019ve added performance<\/a>, but they\u2019ve not added anywhere near as much performance as I think they thought they would. Qualifying was a key area that they wanted to work on, so the one lap pace, and I think Charles probably realized very early on that while the car<\/a> did feel better, they just hadn\u2019t shut the gap in that metric.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I think that will be a concern because it will almost certainly have been a big part of their cost cap development budget that they would have spent on this package.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Why the Rivals\u2019 Steps Make It Worse<\/p>\n

Having been the closest threat to Mercedes<\/a> over the first three rounds of the season, Ferrari hoped to narrow the gap even further but the likes of McLaren<\/a> and Red Bull also brought a raft of upgrades, and it looks like there\u2019s are performing much better.<\/p>\n

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Red Bull had a poor start to 2026, with both Max Verstappen<\/a> and Isack Hadjar<\/a> critical of the car (and the regulations), which means the Milton Keynes outfit was effectively starting from a lower base. Despite this, it still managed to leapfrog Ferrari in the pecking order. Lewis Hamilton<\/a>, for his part, said after Sprint Qualifying that \u201cI thought we would be stronger than we were today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Barretto continued:<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, I think it is worrying. I think they\u2019ll be more worried when they saw what Red Bull brought and how much of a step they were able to make. Obviously, how much of a step McLaren have made as well. So I think they will be concerned. Equally though, Ferrari have had a habit in the last couple of years of bringing parts and they don\u2019t work.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I think that they probably shouldn\u2019t be too hard on themselves because Charles probably should have had a podium again today. That would have made him three out of four podiums, so I guess it\u2019s all relative to how well or how bad it\u2019s been.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Leclerc was running at the front for large stretches of the race before his disastrous final-lap. The package may not have delivered the leap in pace the team wanted, but the underlying car is far from slow.<\/p>\n

Of course, bringing upgrades and understanding them enough to extract performance from them is two different things.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was talking to one technical director actually ahead of the weekend and he was like, \u2018what if we bring all these bits and it\u2019s one bit that doesn\u2019t work? It\u2019s going to take us ages to work out which bit.\u2019 So I think actually let\u2019s just let it play out a little bit longer.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cI actually still think Ferrari are in a good spot. It\u2019s just this upgrade package just hasn\u2019t delivered or they just haven\u2019t found how to get the most out of it because they\u2019ve only had 90 minutes of practice and it might just be that they bought too much stuff and they then don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Ferrari\u2019s own race report claimed the upgrades \u201cworked as expected, bringing extra performance to the package.\u201d<\/p>\n

The team apparently believes the direction is right. Canada<\/a>, where a second phase of development is already planned, will tell them how right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ferrari arrived in Miami with no fewer than 11 new parts on its SF-26, the most extensive upgrade…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":257802,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[67509,111833,123,125,124,84289],"class_list":["post-257801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-ferrari","tag-lawrence-barretto","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news","tag-red-bull"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257801\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/257802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}