GP Arabia, Vasseur: “More than 3 tenths from Red Bull, but we're progressing”

by VALERIO BARRETTA

Vasseur highlights Ferrari's progress

In a race that seemed like a photocopy of Bahrain, with Red Bull taking the lead and Ferrari chasing, the Cavallino team principal Frederic Vasseur he manages to be optimistic. The Frenchman underlined the progress that the SF-24 has made on the pace and, while admitting that Red Bull is still distant, he recalled that the season is still long and that Ferrari, in his opinion, will have opportunities to return to victory.

Vasseur's words

“Overall we have made a good step forward in terms of degradation, and now we are able to be consistent. We still lack the pace a little compared to Red Bull, there are 2-3 tenths in qualifying and maybe a little more in the race. As soon as we have a clear track we can take a step forward and be faster, but it's still not enough“, these are his words to Sky Sports F1. “We must also keep in mind that a year ago we were 1.5 seconds behind Gedda, while today we were 4 tenths. It's a good step forward, but the season is long and we will have other opportunities“.

Congratulations to Bearman

Red Bull may have achieved a double but the award for best goes to Oliver Bearmancapable of finishing 7th on his F1 debut and beating Lewis Hamilton: “When we called Oliver just before FP3 we didn't expect this type of result, but already yesterday in qualifying he had done something fantastic, and the race went very well. He knew before the race that he would have to manage many things, from starting procedures to pit stops and so on, but everything went very well“, he added. “Even at the end when he had to push to keep Norris and Hamilton behind him, he managed to grow and improve lap after lap. I'm more than happy for him and for the Ferrari Driver Academy, he did a great job“.

The strategy

The Frenchman then explained how the Safety Car pit stop was an easy read for the wall: “We returned very early, we put the hards on and I think it was the right choice, while Norris and Hamilton's choice wasn't.“, he concluded. “When you have to do 40-42 laps on the hard tires you have to pay attention to the tyres, and considering the fact that we did the first laps behind Piastri or Norris, damaging the tires a bit: I think it was the correct approach to be conservative at the start of the stint . The problem is that it doesn't we are magical at top speed, we lost position on Perez because of this. It was then difficult to follow him. Red Bull clearly has an advantage, we have a performance gap compared to them, and we need to be clear with ourselves about this. We have already seen two opposite tracks with Sakhir and Gedda, and it was good to be competitive in both. Everyone will make the most of the car and improve in the next races, we took a step forward last season, like McLaren, and this means that we will always have to focus on ourselves to do a good job in Australia with the hope that Carlos returns to squad“.