F1 Qualifying Spain, Vasseur: “Leclerc’s mistake, P3 was easy”

by VALERIO BARRETTA

Spanish GP qualifying, Ferrari on the third row

The updates brought to Montmeló have not given the Ferrari that push that allows her to fix what has so far been her biggest weakness: qualifying. At Montmeló, a circuit where it is very difficult to overtake, the SF-24s occupy the third row and tomorrow they will need a good starting point as well as an important race pace to hope to fight for the podium.

Vasseur’s words

Frederic Vasseur – team principal of the Cavallino – is not satisfied with today’s result and regrets an error by Charles Leclerc, which cost the Monegasque the second row: “First of all we decided to save a set of tires for tomorrow, Mercedes didn’t do that and I think that will be an advantage for the first stint. We are a little disappointed because Charles made a mistake in turn 5 and I think we lost an easy third position in that corner, but it’s part of the game: we are very close and we have to push, mistakes are made like this at the end. I’m not a big fan of this type of track, with long corners, but overall we had a good qualifying“, this is the comment of the Frenchman a Sky Sports F1. “We have to put everything together for tomorrow, and tomorrow the temperature will be a little bit colder: hopefully this will go in our direction. Let’s hope we can catch up to the leaders“.

“What if I expected to be closer to McLaren? No, because the others also bring partsthey are not sleeping, and also because in this type of track the impact of tire management is much greater than the weight of the updates“, has continued. “Clearly it’s important to have a couple of tenths more or less, it’s always a good boost, but in the end we have to do with what we have, have a good race tomorrow, bring home some points. We know that it will be like this until the end of the season, with ups and downs, with some weekends in which we will be in front and other weekends in which we will be in the third row. And when we are in the third row the objective will be to score as many points as possible. Clearly when we talk about scoring points, we always want to do better than the starting position and recover: there are still 15-16 races to go, so it’s important to score lots of points every weekend“.

“We have a new set of tyres, we have the pace, we can catch up to the first two, at least we can try to overtake the two Mercedes and fight for the podium. And then if you are third and fourth you score more points than those who finished first and tenth. Cold track an advantage? I think we would be in better shape. At the start of qualifying we were going faster and the track was a little colder, and in the race I think that will be the direction“.