Ferrari fourth strength
He can’t rejoice Fred Vasseur at the end of the Spanish GP. The Ferrari team principal had to analyze a race in which his two drivers first fought – even hard – with each other to obtain fifth position and then failed, despite different strategies, to get ahead of the two Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton and George Russell. A final result which places Ferrari as the fourth force of this weekenddespite the disappointing performances of Perez and Piastri with the other two Red Bulls and McLarens.
Qualification to be improved
Speaking into the microphones of Sky Sports F1 the French team principal pointed the finger above all towards one disappointing qualificationwhich he said then prevented the reds from having the chance to at least get on the podium. “For me the bottom line is we need to do a better job on Saturdays – declared Vasseur – yesterday there was a difference of two tenths and today we had almost the same gap. If we consider the 67 laps we closed at 20 seconds and that is precisely two and a half tenths per lap. The important thing is to be on pace on Saturday: in qualifying you have to take this small step forward, because when you start from behind it becomes difficult to overtake and you have to take risks with the strategy“.
The Sainz-Leclerc duel
On the duel, full of sparks, between Sainz and Leclerc, Vasseur glossed over: “It was a small contact, but we didn’t miss anything. At that stage of the race we were fifth and sixth and at a certain point, with the strategy, we found ourselves behind some cars: there we lost a few seconds. I believe that [a Leclerc] it was one lap away from catching Russell – added the number one of the red wall – but in the end we started fifth and sixth and finished fifth and sixth“.
Towards Austria and beyond
Looking to the future, although it is usually said that Barcelona’s results ‘are authentic’ for the entire championship, Vasseur did not appear too pessimistic about the comparison with Red Bull, McLaren and Mercedes: “This is the situation in Barcelona – he concluded – and this is clear, but it was not the situation two weeks ago nor that of Munich. I think the values will change every weekend, because there are no longer five-six tenths between each car, as it was in the past, when you could do what you wanted but the ranking was always the same. Now we have four teams in two tenths and this means that the positions can always change, for the set-up, for tire management, for tire temperature. Maybe you can take a small step that then gives you a big profit. This means that everything will be open in Austria next weekend: there will be a different format, with the Sprint, and also the track will probably be more suited to our characteristics“.
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