Ferrari starts again with the usual mantra: “We think one GP at a time”

Chasing Kimi

The hunt for Mercedes and Andrea Kimi Antonelli restarts from the Netherlands and Zandvoort: after the summer break, the World Championship resumes this weekend, with a Sprint weekend that could shuffle the cards. Ferrari comes off the disappointment of Budapest: in Hungary, before the break, they dreamed of bringing home a one-two finish but neither Lewis Hamilton nor Charles Leclerc managed to get on the podium. The Englishman is currently second in the Drivers’ standings, exactly 50 points behind Antonelli, while Leclerc is fourth in the World Championship; among the Constructors, the team led by Fred Vasseur must recover 72 points from the silver arrows. A difficult mission, but Vasseur himself, presenting the trip to the Netherlands, invited the team not to get ahead of themselves with thoughts, but to think race by race.

Vasseur’s ‘mantra’

“Zandvoort marks the start of the second part of the season: our approach remains the same, to face one race at a time and focus on ourselves – said the French manager – we have recharged our batteries and are ready for what we expect to be a very tight competition. As always with the Sprint format, we will have only one free practice session before the Sprint Qualifying, which makes preparation even more important and the fact of being able to do everything the right way from the first laps. Zandvoort is a challenging track both for the drivers and the cars and our goal will be to put ourselves in the best possible conditions to make the most of the opportunities that will arise“.

Historically, Ferrari is the most successful F1 team at Zandvoort, with as many as 8 wins. Since the orange track returned to the calendar in the 2021 season, however, only two podiums have arrived – both third places – with Charles Leclerc, in 2022 and 2024. Not exactly a haul to be proud of. This weekend, all the more so with the Sprint race, therefore represents the perfect opportunity to straighten the statistics before the definitive exit of the historic track located 30 km from Amsterdam from the world championship calendar.

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