VCARB boss Laurent Mekies says that the Faenza team has to nail the car sweet spot in the last two races in order to beat rivals Alpine and Haas to sixth place in the World Championship.
After Yuki Tsunoda’s ninth place in Las Vegas VCARB has 46 points to the 50 of Alpine and 49 of Haas.
The team rolled the dice by upgrading to the Red Bull RB20 rear suspension in Las Vegas, and it was initially lost in FP1 as it tried to optimise the revised package.
However by qualifying the team had found performance, and Tsunoda earned an impressive P7, although he lost two spots in the race itself to Lewis Hamilton and Nico Hulkenberg.
Mekies says that the team has to get everything right in the last two races.
“We’ll try to concentrate on ourselves,” he told this website. “It’s about nailing our car sweet spot, giving our drivers what they need to perform as we know they’re able to, and if we do that naturally, it will put us where we need to be.
“We need to concentrate on ourselves, execute two very strong weekends, as much as we executed very, very strongly in Las Vegas and in Brazil.
“It’s going to be decided probably on the last lap of the last race in Abu Dhabi. I think it’s fantastic for the sport that you can have this amazing battle at the front, amazing battle in the middle.
“And you have car manufacturers involved in these battles. You have what used to be small teams who are now serious organisations. It’s a giant battle. And I think it’s great for the fans, and it’s what we love in the sport.”
Mekies admitted that the team initially struggled to optimise the upgraded car in first practice in Las Vegas.
“Honestly, we started on the wrong foot on Thursday,” he said. “So we didn’t help ourselves with that. We were at the last two spots of the classification in FP1.
“So this was not great, but the guys have been incredible at analysing what was wrong, and putting the car back in the right window in the tricky conditions. We ultimately produced a P7 in quali, which is a very strong result, and the P9 in the race.
“Yuki was for a large part of the race in P7, and then in P8, so it’s never going to make you happy to lose the top of the midfield positions at three or four laps to go. But that’s what it is.
“I think what is behind is that the performance is now good enough to fight in all conditions. It was good enough to fight in Brazil. It’s good enough to fight in Vegas.
“So we are three or four points away of Alpine and Haas, and it would be a very good fight in Qatar and Abu Dhabi.”
Adam Cooper F1 