New Delhi, July 31 (IANS) Ferrari Team Principal Fred Vasseur believes the team’s bold decision to debut their latest upgrades at the Belgian Grand Prix will pay dividends this weekend in Hungary, as the Italian squad looks to close the gap to championship leaders McLaren.

Ferrari introduced a long-awaited rear suspension update at Spa-Francorchamps, hoping to address lingering performance issues in low-speed corners. Despite limited practice time due to the Sprint weekend format, the new parts showed promise. Charles Leclerc brought home a podium in third, while Lewis Hamilton recovered from a poor qualifying to finish seventh.

“For sure, you have some upgrades during the season where it’s paying off from lap one,” Vasseur told Sky Sports. “And some others that you have to fine-tune and to understand exactly the behaviour – to understand the correlation with the brakes, ride height and so on. We are still in this process.”

Vasseur admitted he would have preferred a more conventional race weekend to introduce such significant changes but felt it was the right moment to take the risk.

“If I have to choose, for sure I would have preferred to have Spa on the normal weekend and to do a kind of slow introduction step by step,” he explained. “But I’m not choosing the calendar, and it was better to do it this weekend, taking some risk. It was the best choice to do it in Belgium and to do the best preparation for Budapest.”

Leclerc said the new rear suspension should prove even more effective in Hungary, where slow-speed corners dominate the circuit layout. “We were not that magic on low-speed corners this weekend,” Vasseur admitted. “It means that we still have some improvement to do. But I’m quite confident that all the tasks that we collected this weekend will pay off in Budapest.”

Hamilton, meanwhile, continues to push for improvements on and off the track in what’s been a challenging debut season with Ferrari. Before the Belgian GP, he revealed that he has been regularly submitting feedback and documents to the team in an effort to help reverse their fortunes.

“I refuse to be another driver that comes and doesn’t win a championship with Ferrari,” Hamilton said.

His former teammate Nico Rosberg praised the seven-time world champion’s drive. “It’s nice to hear that Lewis is really pushing because he could also be giving up,” Rosberg said. “He could say, ‘What the hell, I’ve done it all – why do I need to struggle through this again?’ But he’s super committed and super motivated, which is great to see.”

While Leclerc now has five podiums this season, Hamilton is still searching for his first – a drought Rosberg believes could end this weekend.

“It’s not an easy situation for him,” Rosberg said. “Leclerc had such an amazing weekend, and Lewis was just struggling all over the place… Yes, it was a great race from him, but when your teammate finishes third, it’s a tough one.

“Hungary is his strongest track in the world, together with Montreal. There are two tracks that I never won at, which are Montreal and Hungary, and that’s just because Lewis was untouchable in those places!”

–IANS

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