Third and fourth place, Red Bull unreachable
There Ferrari and the second force on the grid, behind a seemingly unreachable Red Bull but also clearly ahead of Mercedes and McLaren. This is the response to the first GP of 2024, which in Bahrain saw the Maranello team celebrate the third step of the podium with Carlos Sainz and a stoic fourth position with Charles Leclerc, hindered for a long time by the brake problems which negatively affected his entire first part of the race. At the end of the Grand Prix the team principal tried to take stock of the situation Frederic Vasseurwho was satisfied (but not too much) with the final result.
Vasseur's reflections
“We expected something better – confessed the French manager to the microphones of Sky Sports F1 – but considering the circumstances and the problems we had in the race I think that overall it is a good result. We didn't expect to have this problem with the brakes which penalized Charles enormously in the first half of the race – continued Vasseur – while Carlos made a good comeback and managed to fight with Perez. We knew in advance that in the last stint we would use the hard tires and they would use the soft ones. The goal was to put some pressure on Perez and we were a little faster at the end, but not enough. We came within 2.5 seconds of him at the end, so overall I think Carlos' race was clean. He didn't start very well but then he recovered quite quickly, he was fighting and managed to find himself in a good position on the track“.
Returning to analyze the complicated situation experienced by Leclerc, Vasseur gave credit to his #16 for having managed to make the best of a difficult situation: “For Charles the first 20 laps were complicated, but overall he did a good job taking home the points for fourth place in these circumstances.”. The Ferrari team principal then highlighted theimportant gap closed by Red Bull and in particular from Verstappen, the real discordant note of the day: “I think Max was so far ahead that he could afford a sequence of laps in which he pushed in one and saved the battery in the other. So they made the fastest lap. In 55 laps he accumulated a 24 second lead, but it still went better than last year. We are always 4-5 tenths behind, and therefore we have to grow. Jeddah will be a totally different race, and so will the asphalt. There will be less degradation with the smooth asphalt, we will have the soft tires and we will start from scratch in terms of performance. What is clear is that if we look from 1st to 10th place the gap is reduced by 50%, and is more difficult on a strategic level to manage. When you go to the pits you return to the track in a further back position and it's a completely different story. We lived up to expectations for the pace in qualifying and in the race we recovered 50%. We can do more, but the start was good“.
The impression, however, is that without the problems experienced by Leclerc perhaps Ferrari could have denied Sergio Perez the second step of the podium: “If Sainz had started further forward and with Charles' pace in the early stages he could have fought with Perez. Charles lost time with the brakes and we don't know why. We didn't get off to a great start compared to Red Bull, but better compared to last year. At tracks like Singapore and Las Vegas we were competing with them and if we manage to develop the car well it will be possible to fight. Today we are ahead of Mercedes, but in Jeddah we will start from scratch. We will have to avoid the problems we had today, we must try to be cleaner“.
#Vasseur #admits #expected
