27/10/2018
NEWS STORY
Following further back-to-back tests, Ferrari has opted not to use its new floor for the remainder of the Mexico weekend.
The floor made its debut in Austin, but with Friday's running compromised by rain it was decided not to use it in the race.
Yesterday, further back-to-back tests were carried out before the team decided to ditch the updated floor for the remainder of the weekend.
The move comes at a time that a number of updates have been blamed for the Scuderia's recent dip in form and subsequently dropped.
"It was an interesting morning," Sebastian Vettel told reporters. "We learned a lot and we're sticking to the old package."
Interestingly, the decision comes at a time Red Bull has introduced a new floor which appears very similar to that of the Ferrari update,
"I don't think we had a tidy lap," admitted the German, who, like his teammate, ruined at least one set of each of the softer tyre compounds after locking-up and generally struggling for grip.
"Everybody's sort of on the limit with tyres and trying to get them to work in order to slide less, with the exception maybe of the Red Bulls," he added.
"The difficulty is you don't have any grip. So we're sliding a lot," he continued. "The problem is if you don't have any grip and downforce, because the air's so thin, you don't get the tyres to work and when the tyres don't work it's really tricky. So that's why I think sometimes you can see quite big jumps in lap time.
"If you don't get it right then you're quite far off the pace. I think everybody still has something to step up tomorrow. The key will be the tyres. If you have 1, 2, 3 or 4km/h more in a straight line I don't think that will be detrimental. But I think it will be much more important to get the tyres in the right window because then around here you can easily get two, three, four, five tenths. Quite a lot of lap time."
Check out our Friday gallery from Mexico City, here.