Saturday in Baku for Ferrari ended with a pole and a second place with Charles Leclerc which bode well, to which was then added the fifth place by Carlos Sainz. If the sprint can represent an appetizer of what could happen tomorrow, the chances of the Red Team to fight for the most important result clearly seem to have reduced given the problems of degradation over the long distance.
After an early part of the race in which Leclerc tried to keep Perez’s pace following the overtaking suffered with the DRS, the Monegasque raised his times quite clearly. A drop which, according to Ferrari’s Team Principal, Fred Vasseur, is due precisely to the fact that Leclerc tried everything to try to keep up with the Mexican from Red Bull, burning the tires for the finale.
“In Melbourne we didn’t have any [di degrado]. We probably pushed a little bit more than we expected to keep Perez’s pace, but now we have to figure out exactly where we can improve by tomorrow, because tomorrow will be another story with at least two stints and different compounds,” explained the engineer. French to the microphones of Sky Italia after the Sprint.
Charles Leclerc, Ferrari SF-23
Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images
Thanks to the Safety Car entering the track due to the problems related to Tsunoda’s contact with the wall after the castle area, the race was essentially reduced to about ten laps at a “normal” pace, enough for the SF-23 to highlight however some degradation issues. Nonetheless, Vasseur hopes that tomorrow the situation will change, perhaps keeping the first position longer and thus avoiding being in dirty air.
“Tomorrow there will be a track with a different temperature and different compounds, because we will have at least two stints to do and we will therefore have to try to vary the strategy. I think degradation can very often hurt you more when you are behind another, but when you are in clean air it can be much better as Carlos’ race showed [Sainz] Today. We’ll try again tomorrow.”
Before today, the Prancing Horse team had not yet tried the medium compound, limiting itself to running on the soft and hard, with which it concluded two short runs in the first free practice session: “What we did on Friday was actually not a long stint because we did three-four laps in a row because of this new format, but it’s also true that we hadn’t tested the mediums at all, we hadn’t tried them before today, so we were a bit blind, but it was the right tire instead for a short stint. We have confidence for tomorrow, but it will be another challenge”.
Carlos Sainz, Scuderia Ferrari
Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images
Although Baku is a track more congenial to the characteristics of the SF-23, Vasseur said he was satisfied with the weekend’s performance so far, above all because it shows improvements which, according to Ferrari, had already appeared in Australia. With Mercedes and Aston Martin further behind, the important thing will be to maximize the pace of the car and the opportunities that will be created to collect important points for the championship standings, something that was lacking in Melbourne.
“Already in Melbourne the pace was much better, even if we didn’t manage to put everything together in the race and finished outside the points. But in qualifying the pace was good and in the race it was also good for Carlos. The point is to put it all together and score points. I believe and hope that tomorrow we will be more opportunistic than we were in Melbourne. The pace is there, we took pole position and I think we made progress compared to Jeddah and Bahrain”
“We know it’s a challenge and even though we were quicker than Red Bull in qualifying, they are ahead in terms of top speed which is crucial in Baku. When Perez opened the DRS it was a space rocket and in a race like this that’s crucial. But tomorrow we have another opportunity, we will be fighting”.
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