Fred Vasseur has said his team is not getting carried away despite a promising Canadian GP for Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz.
The duo raced from 10th and 11th on the grid (Sainz taking a grid penalty for baulking Pierre Gasly in Qualifying) to fourth at fifth at the flag.
It was a more positive performance than the team has had in recent races, but Vasseur is not getting ahead of himself.
“Now we don’t have to draw a conclusion about the situation or the season after one race,” the Ferrari team principal warned.
“Montreal is a bit different, it’s a lot about kerbing, the track is green, but it’s true that we are going in the right direction, and I hope that it will be also the case in two weeks now in Austria.”
Ferrari has struggled this season with a tricky, inconsistent car.
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That was well demonstrated by Leclerc in Spain, who struggled on the first set of hards before a second set later in the race saw his SF-23 come alive.
It was a similar scenario to what was seen in Miami, where Leclerc and Sainz struggled at points, but each on the opposite compound of Pirelli rubber.
Ferrari introduced upgrades for Spain designed to iron out some of that inconsistency.
Speaking after that event, Vasseur was confident it had made a difference, even if it wasn’t evident in the final classifications.
“The last stint we did with the same tyres as [Fernando] Alonso, I think for almost the same number of laps,” the Ferrari boss said of the promising Canadian GP performance.
“It was plus or minutes one second in 30 laps.
“For sure, you can always say that [Max] Verstappen was not flat out, but I do not think the personality is like this.
“Compared to two or three races ago, we finished 10 seconds, and it was almost the gap at the end of Lap 1.”
Leclerc finished 18.6 seconds behind Verstappen on Sunday, and three seconds ahead of team-mate Sainz.
Starting at the wrong end of the top 10, Ferrari adopted a different strategy to the leaders.
When they took to the lane under the Safety Car triggered by George Russell finding the wall on Lap 12, Ferrari left both its cars on track.
That saw it gain track position, holding it even through the second pit stop cycle – Leclerc stopping on Lap 39, a lap after Sainz.
“We are developing the car into this direction to try to get consistency, to have something a bit easier to drive,” Vasseur explained when asked why the car was more consistent in Canada.
“Step-by-step, we are going in the right direction – not that you can draw conclusions after one event in one way or the other.
“Let’s wait for Austria now and the UK.”
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