The words of the Ferrari team principal
For the second consecutive Qualifying, Ferrari found itself facing an anomalous functioning of the electrical part of the power unit. Charles Leclerc, in fact, lost a lot of ground in the third sector on the decisive lap that could have put him on the second row with or instead of teammate Lewis Hamilton.
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In Australia more or less the same thing happened during Q2, with the Ferraris being very far from the times set previously for the first part of that session.
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Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur commented on Shanghai Friday as follows: “Today’s Sprint Qualifying was more positive than the final result suggests. Lewis did a good job in a very close battle with the McLarens. Charles was also competitive but unfortunately his second attempt was not good in the last sector. We will analyze the data in detail to understand what happened, given that he did not have the same energy deployment as his first flying lap. Tomorrow we will see what we can do in the Sprint race, but I am confident that we can achieve another solid result. Today in practice we also tested the inverted rear wing to accumulate further mileage before being able to use it permanently on the car.”