Laurent Mekies says Scuderia Ferrari can take some positives from their 2020 campaign despite finishing only sixth in the Constructors’ Championship having scored only three podiums.
Charles Leclerc took podiums in the Austrian and British Grand Prix, while Sebastian Vettel denied the Monegasque racer a third one at the penultimate turn of the Turkish Grand Prix for his only trip to the podium in his final year with the team.
Ferrari were often found lacking in both aerodynamic and engine performance through the season, but Mekies, the Sporting Director at the Maranello-based team, says there learned a lot throughout 2020 that he hopes will bode well for them in 2021 and beyond.
“There were a lot of small, very significant achievements in the year, that were unnoticed because we were at the back,” Mekies is quoted as saying by Motorsport.com. “It’s something that hopefully will make us stronger, and that we will carry on to the next year.
“What we take from that is even in such hard time, in such globally difficult conditions, the way we have tried and pushed our limits. When you are back there, you are down to take more risk, drivers are taking more risk, the team takes more risk because that’s what you have to do to get a good result.
“That sort of getting out of the comfort zone, if you can call it a comfort zone, certainly will make us stronger in the future.”
Mekies says there were concerns during pre-season testing at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya in February that it was going to be a difficult season, and the enforced break caused by the coronavirus pandemic made it impossible to rectify them in time for the condensed season.
“In Barcelona we quickly realised that we had serious concerns about some of aspects of the performance of the car,” said Mekies. “So we knew it was going to be very difficult.
“We didn’t know yet at that time how long it was going to be for us to understand them fully, and even less to fix them. And then we went into that crazy situation, where we all jumped into COVID at that stage, and couldn’t touch all problems of the car for a few months.
“I guess there were indications there that the season would be extremely difficult, as it turned out to be.”
