F1 | Vasseur: “Tracks with short corners are coming. We will be stronger”

Ferrari left Holland with an unexpected result. Charles Leclerc’s podium and Carlos Sainz’s fifth place comeback gave a very different slide from the initial expectations.

Zandvoort should have been one of the most complicated tracks for the SF-24s, perhaps the worst. Instead, in the race the Reds performed very well for a series of factors, including excellent tire management, a good set-up, an excellent pit strategy and the practically perfect work of the drivers.

So here’s where the result came from that left the Prancing Horse team somewhat satisfied. But there’s no time to reassure ourselves, because in a few days there will be the home event, the Italian Grand Prix at the Autodromo Internazionale di Monza.

And Ferrari, in front of its fans, arrives as an ambitious team. The upcoming updates and the nature of the track seem to be two perfect factors to enhance the Maranello cars. The same goes for Baku and Singapore. In short, Ferrari has three very important wild cards to play to define its season.

“I hope that in the next two, three events we will be in better shape, more competitive,” admitted Ferrari team principal Frédéric Vasseur at the end of last weekend’s Dutch Grand Prix.

For some time now, Ferrari has been struggling in long corners. In fact, in Zandvoort it encountered more than one difficulty, especially on the single lap. Monza, Baku and Zandvoort should be suitable for the cars entrusted to Leclerc and Sainz.

“Last year we were much stronger on tracks like Monza and Singapore. I think that also in this case, for a question of details, the fact of being strong in the short corners will help us.”

Ferrari will debut a package of updates in front of its home crowd. This should be a further step towards the competitiveness that was lost in the first part of the summer and that, at least in part, was seen again at Zandvoort, but only on Sunday.

“If we can make a step forward of one or two tenths, the situation can change even more for the better. But we also know that everyone is improving.”

Vasseur, however, prefers to keep his feet firmly on the ground. The gap of almost 25 seconds suffered by Norris in Zandvoort is a clear sign of how much Ferrari still has to work to try to reduce the gap from the current Formula 1 benchmark and get back to fighting for victories.

“We know that today we have a big gap to Lando, in Zandvoort we were quite far. This means that we have a lot of work to do. I will never go to Monza, Baku or other tracks that on paper are favourable with the feeling that it will be easy for us”, concluded the Scuderia team principal.