Both Ferrari drivers Sebastian Vettel and Charles Leclerc have hailed improvements made to their SF1000, saying it’s much quicker through the corners.

Both of Ferrari’s race drivers Sebastian Vettel and Charles Leclerc have commented on the vast improvement made by the team for their 2020 SF1000 over last year’s SF91H.

The 2019 car was very fast in a straight line, but struggled to corner as quickly as the Mercedes W10 or Red Bull’s RB15. As a result, downforce has been the focus for Ferrari in 2020.

“Where is the improvement?” mused Vettel when asked about the car. “Well obviously, in the corners. Down the straight it’s very difficult to tell, but all the work has been focused on finding more speed through the corners and trying to test different items. The car is a step forward so around here and the fast corners, Turn 3 and Turn 9…it just feels more comfortable. Around the rest of the track, there’s more grip, and it’s faster than last year. Even in my neck, I can feel the improvement in the car!”

Charles Leclerc also pointed out the Ferrari’s increased proficiency for cornering, saying “Sector 3 is the most technical one, where there are the most corners. On that, I’m pretty sure we have improved and I can go quicker through the corners,” he said, speaking to media on Wednesday night.

“I think the biggest strength is the speed around the corners. I think on that, we have achieved our goal. Then we need to wait and see for the overall performance of the car,but we are going around the corners quicker than we did last year, so that’s positive. But we need to keep working on this car to unlock a bit more performance.”

However, despite this improvement, the feeling at Ferrari is that the car is not as quick as the Mercedes’ W11, and possibly not ahead of Red Bull’s car either. Team boss Mattia Binotto said last week he felt Ferrari are behind and re-iterated his stance during the second week of testing.

“As I said last week, we believe we’re not fastest car at the moment,” said Binotto. “We think on lap time we will be behind at the start of the season. Where are we lacking? The car this season compared to ours last season is overall faster, but we are faster in the corners, slow on the straights, which was our objective from the end of last year. We try to put as much downforce on the car as we could to be as fast as possible in the corners, but now we are paying for it a bit on the straights.”