Tag Archives: Ferrari

Charles Leclerc admits that Ferrari has to “do something special” in the Qatar GP in order to gain points on McLaren in the fight for the constructors’ title.

The Maranello team lost a further six points in Saturday’s sprint, leaving the gap at 30 heading into today’s main event.

Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri will start third and fourth, behind George Russell and Max Verstappen, while Leclerc is fifth and his team mate Carlos Sainz seventh.

“Honestly, today was the best we could do,” said the Monegasque driver. “I was really happy with both of my laps. There was very little between them, I think two or three hundredths. There wasn’t anything more in the car tonight.

“I honestly think that we are much closer than what we thought, compared to McLaren. However, compared to Mercedes and Red Bull, it’s another story. It was surprising for us to see them so fast.

“We did not expect them to be so strong. McLaren, we expected them to be better compared to us. So all in all, we are fighting McLaren, so we have a good race pace and tomorrow everything is possible.”

Leclerc said the target had to be to get ahead of the McLarens in the race.

“We still had hope that we could turn the situation around,” he said. “Because at the end, if we want to win the constructors’, we’ve got to finish in front this weekend, and we cannot afford to just take the points available.

“We need to overperform in order to target the constructors. So, yeah, tomorrow we’ve got to do something special in order to gain some points on them.”

He added: “I think we’ve got a good race pace. We’ve got to have a good start, because I don’t think our race pace is enough to overtake on track.

“So definitely strategy and race starts will be key moments for us in order to gain positions on the McLarens.”

Carlos Sainz is concerned that Ferrari will face “a mission impossible” in its fight for the constructors’ championship unless it beats McLaren in today’s Qatar GP.

McLaren gained six points on the Maranello outfit in Saturday’s sprint race and can clinch the title today race if Ferrari has a bad race.

Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri start third and fourth, while Charles Leclerc is fifth, and Sainz seventh.

The Spaniard acknowledges that even it the title remains mathematically open heading to Abu Dhabi it could be beyond Ferrari’s reach.

He says that come what may the team has to beat McLaren, disregarding the fact that a Mercedes and a Red Bull start ahead of both teams and could potentially take the biggest haul of points.

“I don’t think it’s about third and fourth, I think it’s about recovering points on them,” said Sainz. “I think we just need to finish ahead of them and independently of the position.

“And of course, it’s good for us if they don’t win P1 and P2, but even if they finish P3 and P4 ahead of us, it’s still going to be almost mission impossible in Abu Dhabi. So it’s more than that.

“It would need to be a very, very big change of pace, because from going a couple of tenths off to being a couple of tenths in front to be able to overtake them, there needs to be a big swing in performance.

“But at we can least stay with them in the race, play with them with strategy and see the start, which is always to do the pit stop, and then see what can happen.”

He added: “So far, I think we’ve maximised everything. Today, I think I should have qualified P6 instead of P7, I went into the last lap of Q3 without a car in front, a tow in front. I don’t know why we were leading the pack, and that’s normally a couple of tenths in the straights for free. Probably missed a bit of that.

“At the same time, the 20.8 of Charles is the 20.8 that the car can more or less achieve. So far, I think we’re maximising everything, but maximising everything, as I said, might not be enough, or might be good enough.”

Sainz admitted that Ferrari struggled to switch on the soft tyres in qualifying.

“I think it’s just the type of corner,” he said when I asked about the team’s form. “You see the track, and we shouldn’t be very quick. And it just seems our through corner balance, overloading in the car in these long combined fifth, sixth gear corners, that doesn’t seem to be performing as well as it should.

“I think we’ve tried everything possible with a soft tyre to switch it on better. Faster, slower, out laps, anything you can imagine.

“And we just simply seem to be finding a bit of a hard limit with the lap time that that we could produce. Particularly with Charles, with the new floor, and also me with a bit of a more difficult session than yesterday.”

Sainz confirmed that the team made changes between the sprint race and qualifying.

“We definitely tried quite a few things, both on setup, but also in tyre preparation. But it just didn’t seem to change our fundamental issues.

“I think when you’re talking about tyre preparation, you’re talking about the last tenth, when you’re like three or four tenths and you see all the medium speed corners, you’re just lacking minimum speeds and a bit of through corner balance, and you realise that maybe just it’s not quite in there.

“But anything can happen still tomorrow, a lot of people also there in the front to upset a bit the order. So I think we can still have a good day.”

Max Verstappen says that George Russell “got excited” during the qualifying incident that triggered a one-place grid penalty for the Red Bull driver and led to him losing pole.

Russell came across a slow-moving Verstappen as both drivers were on their prep laps prior to their final runs in Q3.

The Mercedes driver was obliged to run wide, and subsequently was not able to improve his time.

However the stewards investigated the incident and deemed that Verstappen was “driving unnecessarily slowly considering the circumstances.”

“There were two cars in front of me also making a gap, so I had to make a gap,” said the Dutchman before the penalty was confirmed.

“And I knew that everyone was on a slow lap, not on a push lap. And then I think George got excited. He wanted to pass and get around. That’s fine. I mean, everyone, of course, tries to get their position to have the best possible start to the lap.”

The fact that Verstappen was in the fight for pole came as a surprise after his team had made significant set-up changes following the sprint.

“It couldn’t have been worse,” he said. “So we just looked at it. It’s not all super clear, but we’re like, well, we have to go and try this direction. We put it on the car and it worked. And of course a lot of people back at the factory analysing a lot of stuff already throughout the whole weekend.

“But at the end of the day you have to make the decisions also on track if you want to do it or not. Simulator is running in the background as well. And yeah, a miracle happened!”

Verstappen said consistency was the key to the improvement.

“Just felt a bit more hooked up on entry, mid-corner,” he said. “Like everything that was bad before improved quite a lot. So I felt it straight away from lap one that it all just felt a bit more consistent. And that’s exactly what we needed to be a bit more competitive.
 
“I think from the first lap in Q1, it felt a lot more promising, but then to get the tyres in the right window is very tough. So then it went away a little bit, then it came back again. And then, yeah, luckily for Q3, I think it was there. And yeah, very happy with how we turned it around.”

He added: “I felt confident in the car, so I was pushing it,” he said. “And honestly, the whole lap was hundredths here, then two hundredths and then the last corner a little bit. It was not a lot compared to the previous lap, but it was just everywhere a little bit better.

“Of course, naturally there is a little bit less feel in the car because I only did one run. That helps. So yeah, it was all pretty close, but it felt just a lot more connected for me.

“And that was definitely necessary. And then you can attack the corners a bit more. And that gave us pole position.”

Regarding prospects for the race he said: “It’s still a bit of a question mark. I did feel that yesterday we were not too far off in qualifying, and then I felt like we were quite far off in the Sprint.

“So this is great, to be on pole, but I’m not sure yet if it’s going to be enough to really be the outright fastest, but we’ll find out tomorrow.”

George Russell says it’s not a surprise that his Mercedes Formula 1 team is fast in Qatar given the smooth nature of the track.

Russell initially qualified second, having gone wide when he came across a slow moving Max Verstappen just before he started his lap.

Having earned pole the Dutchman was later given a one-place penalty for moving unnecessarily slowly, thus swapping the positions of the two front row men, and giving Russell his fourth top spot of the season.

Speaking before that decision was made Russell suggested that the Verstappen incident had prevented him from earning pole on merit.

“To be honest, my first lap was really strong,” he said. “I was really pleased with that. I think it was a couple of tenths clear. And then I just didn’t improve on that last lap.

“Obviously, I had a really scrappy out lap with the near collision with Max, and I ended up going through the gravel two corners prior to opening my lap. So it was not a good start. So that was probably the 55 milliseconds.

“It’s great to be in this groove at the moment, four front row starts in a row, which has been really pleasing considering where we were three or four races ago.

“And the race pace this morning looked great. So Max did a great job. Red Bull seemed to turn it around a little bit since yesterday, but let’s see what tomorrow brings.”
 
Russell had a clear idea why Mercedes has been so fast recently.

“Well, I think these last two races, the circuits have played in our favour,” he said. “We know when we can get the car low and stiff on a smooth track, it works pretty well.

“Brazil, we didn’t actually have the pace. We were very slow in the sprint, in the sprint qualifying, but of course it was a wet qualifying on the Sunday morning, so that evened things out a little bit.

“So I think we flattered ourself a bit in Brazil, but these last two races, when we really, analyse it. I don’t think it’s a surprise the car is performing as well as it has shown.”

Regarding the race he said: “I think it’s going to be a really close fight between all four teams. Ferrari looked on the same pace as Lando and myself this morning. I hope it’s going to be a good one, but the tyres seem pretty resilient. Maybe we’ll see another DRS train, I don’t know.”

Russell says driving guidelines are not “rocket science” Picture @tinnekephotography

A discussion of Formula 1 driving guidelines in Qatar on Thursday evening focussed on overtaking on the inside.

The consensus that the driver making a pass on the inside should be allowed to run a rival wide, as long as he stays within the confines of the track.

GPDA director George Russell said that it was “not rocket science” to accept that as standard practice.

Drivers also highlighted how track layouts and run-off areas are the main issue in allowing cars to run wide without penalty.

The meeting was scheduled several weeks ago to give the drivers a chance to air their views about the guidelines, which were placed firmly in the spotlight by a rash of incidents and penalties in Austin and Mexico.

With race director Niels Wittich having been sacked in the interim it was also the first chance for the drivers to discuss the subject at length with his replacement, Rui Marques.

GPDA director George Russell said that the discussion had been a positive one.

 “It was pretty productive,” said Russell. “I think we all agree the guidelines, they don’t need massive changes. I think we just need the odd sentence removed or adjusted. But I think everybody’s clear with what happened in Austin, what should have been a penalty. What happened in Mexico was rightly penalised.

“And generally speaking, over the course of the year, I think the decisions have been pretty good. It was just probably Austin that was the outlier. So just fine tweaks.”

Russell said that the consensus was that a driver overtaking on the inside should be allowed to run a rival wide, as long as he stays within the confines of the track.

“The discussion was mainly about overtaking,” he said. “I don’t want to go into detail what was what was spoken about, but I think a lot of drivers are aligned that if you are the overtaking car on the inside, rule number one is you have to be able to stay on the circuit.

“If you’re able to stay on the circuit, you are in your right to run the driver wide, as it has been for all of us since go karts. If you’re overtaking somebody on the inside, you’ve got the right to run them wide.

“And we also concluded that most of these issues are down to the circuits. We spoke about a number of issues in in Austin.

“I think a lot of the overtakes wouldn’t have even been attempted had there been gravel there, such as Austria Turn 4, the downhill right hander, you know you’re going to go in the gravel if you go one or two per cent over the limit.

“Silverstone at Stowe, obviously a great racing a couple of years ago, with Lewis and Checo and Charles, ultimately, everyone was off the track, but that’s because the track allowed you. The circuits are the root cause, and the guidelines are kind of like an interim fix that we need to agree on until we can get all of the circuits in a proper manner.”

He added: “Everyone’s in agreement, to be honest. I know there was maybe a bit of disagreement when we had the meeting in Mexico, but I think that was probably just a bit of self-protection.

“I don’t think it’s rocket science, I think we all feel the same way. If you’re overtaking on the inside and you make the corner and you’re not running off, it’s your corner, and you want to see hard racing.

“You want to see drivers battling wheel-to-wheel. It looks awesome when people are going through the gravel and sparks being flown up. And I think the stewards recognise that.

“If you’re on the outside being overtaken, it’s on you to yield. And right now there is a line of a regulation that says the inside driver needs to leave room to the guy on the outside from the apex to the exit, and I think that’s going to be getting binned off, and I hope it’s going to be from this weekend onwards.”

Russell stress that track design remains the key issue.

“I think the overtaking rules on the outside will not be changing much,” he said. “And I don’t think we’ve really seen much of a problem, as I said, on my personal view, generally this year, I think it’s worked.

“It’s just the issues that came up in Austin were obviously highlighted quite a lot, but ultimately it came down to the same fact, which was the circuit allows you to do that.

“If you take Max’s example of how late he braked into the corner, he wouldn’t do that in a corner that has gravel on the outside, because the risk to yourself is too great.

“Whereas when you’ve got tarmac on the outside, the risk is you just run a bit wide, and you get a track limits warning. So that’s going to change now.”

Max Verstappen also agreed that track layouts was the main issue when it came to overtaking.

“We still need, for sure, a few more discussions about certain things,” said the Dutchman when asked by this writer about the meeting.

“But I think it more has to do with the track layouts. “Some places just have a lot of run-off, and that creates already a lot of issues. So that’s something that we have to work on for the future.

 “The main problem is the track that allows these kinds of things. So if you have gravel, that naturally stops you from doing things, taking a bit more risk than normal.”

Lewis Hamilton welcomed the opportunity for the drivers to air their views on the subject.

“It’s very complex, because all these different corners, so many different scenarios,” said the Mercedes driver.

“They don’t have an easy job at all. I think it helps us all sitting with them, having a discussion. In their minds this year it has been better in terms of consistency, but obviously everyone wants it to be perfect.

“But until you have those discussions for them to fully understand from where we’re sitting, from where we’re fighting, what we’re fighting for, and where what we think is right or wrong in certain scenarios, it’s good for them to hear and for us to work on real clear guidelines so that also from in the car you know exactly what you have.”

Franco Colapinto admits that James Vowles “wasn’t very happy” after his huge crash in Q2 in Las Vegas – but says that the support of the Williams boss helped him to bounce back on race day.

Colapinto had his third crash in two race weekends when he went off in Q2 while trying to break into the top 10.

He was able to start the race from the pitlane in the spare chassis, and had a solid race to 13^th place at the flag.

The crash added to the strain on resources that the team has experienced with the high level of crash damage this season, and Colapinto concedes that it wasn’t easy to face Vowles afterwards.

“He wasn’t very happy, but he has been always very, very supportive,” he said. “I always take out of every bad moment very positive things, and it’s every time because of James, his thinking and his mentality and his way of moving forward as a team leader and as a team.

“I think I learned a lot from him, and he has been an amazing team leader for the little time that I’ve been working with him. I know how important how all this is for him, and it also is for me.

“But when these things happen, when two tough weekends in a row happen like this, the mentality and the will to keep pushing forward, not giving up and always finding a solution to the problems is its strength, and always finding a positive thing in the negatives.

“And I think that is very important, and is what is going to move this team back to the top.”

Colapinto admitted that he took too many risks in Q2, while acknowledging that his life was made harder by Pierre Gasly being in front of him.

“When you are driving, you are going to a limit,” he said when asked about qualifying by this writer. “And I think for what the situation was in the beginning of the lap, I had to take more risks to try to get into Q3 – probably not that much!

“I tried my best, I think was difficult to manage that last run in Q2. We were very close to Gasly at the start of the lap, I did a very big gap, I did a four-second gap before starting the push. And then I think he really, really slowed down after Turn 16, after that kink to a left. And before starting the lap, he slowed down so, so much.

“I was eight-tenths behind him. It was Piastri behind me finishing the lap. I was in a very, very awkward position and really not ideal. And I started the lap eighth-tenths behind Gasly.

“So I had to take more risks than what I should have. I had a lot of dirty year in that lap, so just a tough quali for us. I think the pace was there to be in Q, or very close. So it’s tough. I think a tough day for us, because we should have been close to it into the top 10.”

Colapinto admitted that keeping out of trouble was his priority in Saturday evening’s Grand Prix.

“The idea was to have a clean race,” he said. “I think it was not ideal after such a big crash to go straight in the race. And I wasn’t feeling so comfortable the first stint there.

“I was really, really struggling with the balance. I had a lot of oversteer, very difficult to manage the tyres. And just not in a good window. I think as the car kept running and the track also kept getting a bit better, it came a bit more towards us.

“But it wasn’t feeling well at the beginning. I lost a lot of time in the first in that strategy, a lot of dirty air, and the tyres were opening very quick, a lot of graining straight away and dirty air and a lot of sliding.

“I think at the start of the race, I was taking a bit more margin,” he said. “It’s difficult after a crash to get back in the rhythm, going straight into a race start from the pit lane, it wasn’t what I wanted. But I think slowly, I started to get back in the pace.

“So I think a very difficult race to manage in terms of strategy, in terms of pit stops, of a lot graining and the degradation that we had. So we need to focus now on the next few races.”