Ferrari, the negative streak continues
The podium drought for Ferrari continues. Also at Madring, also on a twisty track – and therefore not penalizing for cars with a power unit power deficit – where the Red team arrived with the (small) advantage of having recorded a filming day at the beginning of summer. This time the half-empty glass Sunday opened with the almost immediate retirement of Lewis Hamilton and closed with the fourth place of a Charles Leclerc who, however, led the race for almost 40 laps in the hope and expectation of a Safety Car or a red flag that could put him back in contention for the win also on the strategic level. A wait that proved vain but nevertheless allowed the Monegasque to show excellent tire management and a speed comparable to that of his rivals who made the podium.
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Fred Vasseur’s comment
This is precisely the positive part of Ferrari’s Sunday. On the other hand, the SF-26 confirms itself as more of a race car than a qualifying car, with the effect of almost always forcing Leclerc and Hamilton to aggressive races to recover positions. And it is on this aspect that Ferrari team principal, Frederic Vasseur, pointed the finger at the end of the GP in the hospitality meeting with some newspapers including FormulaPassion.it: “Honestly, if we missed something in terms of points, it was mostly in qualifying and a bit in Monza. But in the Madrid race we did what we had to do, we took the risk we had to take. We need to improve on Saturday, because the race pace is there”.
According to the French manager, who had already touched on this topic on Friday after free practice, the margin for improvement is also in understanding the grip level in Q3, considering how much Ferrari struggles to improve performance in the decisive lap compared to those in Q1 and Q2: “Monza was a completely different track, but if we take Zandvoort and this race, the event profile is a bit the same for us… We had a decent pace in qualifying, but we couldn’t put it all together on the last attempt”. “If today I had to focus the team’s attention on something, it would be the evolution of pace in qualifying, more than the pace in qualifying itself, but the evolution, the progress that can be made during the session. We were there in positions from first to third, the potential is there, we just need to adapt better”, concludes Ferrari team principal, Fred Vasseur.
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