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Ferrari to keep the pressure on Red Bull

ESPN Staff
October 1, 2013 « Michael expects 2014 development race to be crucial | Maldonado feeling the pressure »
Ferrari will keep bringing new parts to its car at upcoming races © Sutton Images
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Ferrari engineering director Pat Fry says the team will continue to bring new parts to the car despite being well adrift in both championships.

Fernando Alonso is 60 points behind Sebastian Vettel in the drivers' standings, while Red Bull can also boast a 103-point advantage over Ferrari in the constructors'. However, Fry told the official Ferrari website that the team has more updates still to come to the car with only minimal running being applicable to 2014.

"We've still got some developments coming through for the next few races and we will be running and testing them to continue to try and improve the car," Fry said. "For 2014, because of the much larger changes to the cars on the engine side and also the aero aspect, it's naturally much harder to test components now, but there will be some small development bits we can run during this year's remaining free practice, looking more on the reliability front than anything else, which means we have busy Fridays planned for the next six races."

Chief designer Nikolas Tombazis said Ferrari could still hope to make progress with the tyres compared to the likes of Red Bull but that it wasn't the sole reason for its troubles this season.

"Our efforts will be partly aimed at continuing to understand better the tyres and tyre management, which might see some improvement compared to our competitors," Tombazis said. "And we are bringing small aero updates. One should not expect these to dramatically affect the final result but we feel they will bring some improvement.

"[The tyre] change occurred after the German GP, when the tyre belt changed from being metallic to being made of Kevlar. However, it would be somewhat superficial to blame the tyres as the only reason for our decrease in performance. We also took some development steps that were not as strong and didn't work."

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