Ferrari's filming day at Mugello on Thursday may officially be classified in the rules as a 'promotional event', but it is one that could well shape the second half of its Formula 1 season.
Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton have been drafted in for what is a critical day of running, with Ferrari burning up the second of its two allowed filming days with the SF-25 (the first one was used at Fiorano for the car launch).
The focus of the 200km of running that Leclerc and Hamilton are allowed to complete is to get an early feel for rear suspension modifications that the team has been working on for several months.
The hope is that the modifications will address a key weakness it has been battling all season in not being able to run the SF-25 with an optimal ride height.
As the team found to its cost, especially in China when Lewis Hamilton was disqualified for his plank being worn too much, its car bottoms out too much in high-speed corners and when full of fuel in races.
This has forced it to make performance compromises with its ride-height and other settings, including downforce levels, to try to avoid the dangers of too much bottoming out wearing the plank away.
At some grands prix, this has even manifested itself in the drivers being told to lift and coast in high-speed sections to avoid the risk of grinding against bumps in the track.
While Ferrari has not offered many details about what the catalyst for this trouble is, it is understood that it relates to the layout of its rear suspension, in particular how it has been designed around other revisions that were made to the car - which included a shorter gearbox.
It is suggested that the changes are primarily aimed at creating more space around the gearbox to allow for greater damper capacity, which will then help improve ride-height control.
If that works, this will not only allow Ferrari to set up its car so it can run closer to the ground where more downforce is produced, but it could help its drivers move away from extreme set-ups that they have been forced to adopt to overcome the car's weaknesses.
Leclerc was first to opt towards a more oversteer-biased set-up, with the aero balance further forward, because it was the best way to limit the danger of the back of the car bottoming out as well as to deliver a better compromise between high- and low-speed corners.
More recently, Hamilton has found himself edging closer to the Leclerc settings too as it has proved to be the best way to extract pace from the SF-25.
If the new suspension delivers what is hoped, then both drivers should be able to move back towards set-ups that they would consider more normal.
And this is why any gains from the suspension tweak should offer two positives - because as well as hopefully unlocking laptime, with the car able to run in a more optimal performance window, there could be good gains for the drivers too if they have an improved feel.
Speaking at the British Grand Prix, Ferrari deputy team principal Jerome D'Ambrosio explained how one of the key aims of the modifications was that more pace would come from driver confidence in having a better-balanced car underneath them.
"Without commenting on details of what's going to come and when it's going to come, part of what we're trying to work on is to try to improve the car balance and help the drivers," he said. "And there's performance in that.
"Sometimes it's more difficult to predict the amount of performance you bring to the track.
"On, aero, I wouldn't say it’s a one-to-one correlation, but often you know how much downforce you're bringing, how much that correlates into laptime.
"But there are aspects of car balance and so on, which is also driver preference, driver comfort, and drivers' driving style.
"So you are trying to put the car in a better balance and that's an objective point - where you see when the car is either too nervous or too understeering in general, and that will bring performance to the team and to the car."
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