The team Ferrari had established itself as the main rival of Red Bull during the first events of the season, joined by McLaren after the first Grands Prix. While Carlos Sainz ended the domination of Max Verstappen and the Austrian team by winning the Australian Grand Prix, Charles Leclerc imitated his teammate by winning at home, and fairly, at the Monaco Grand Prix. A success which had, at the time, suggested that the Monegasque, and the Maranello team, would be able to compete with Verstappen for the title of World Champion.
However, from the Canadian Grand Prix, the Scuderia fell into line, and in Montreal experienced one of its worst weekends in recent years, its two drivers navigating in the middle of the pack before both being forced to abandonment.
In Barcelona, Ferrari saw the gap between them and Red Bull and McLaren, with Leclerc and Sainz qualifying in 5th and 6th place, before finishing the race in the same position, more than 20 seconds behind the leaders, and now even overtaken by Mercedes.
While Ferrari’s performances seem to be running out of steam at the moment, Carlos Sainz hopes that Barcelona will remain a misstep after Canada, and believes that the profile of the Red Bull Ring will suit the Italian single-seaters better.
Carlos Sainz expects Ferrari to perform better in Barcelona
Photo by: Ferrari
“It wasn’t our best weekend, but [Barcelone] is also the circuit where we had the most difficulty last year”commented Sainz. “So we hope it’s just that it was a circuit [qui ne nous convenait pas]and that there will be other circuits where we will be a little more competitive.”
“It’s the fast nature of the track and the long turns combined [qui ne nous conviennent pas]. We always seem to have difficulties in the long corners like in China, here or at Suzuka. And I remember Austria was not a problem for the track characteristics, so I think we will be more competitive because of the types of corners.”
Similarly, Frédéric Vasseur, the director of the Ferrari team, also believes that the hierarchy seen in Barcelona does not reflect the real level of performance of the teams which remains, according to the French manager, dependent on the tracks tackled, and this since the beginning of the season.
We haven’t changed the car extensively, which means the results are more related to the track layout.
“The order is never the same, and we see it because over the last four weekends [de course]four different teams ended up on pole position. We didn’t make any major changes to the car, which means the results are more down to track layout, compounds and temperature window [des pneus]”comments Vasseur. “Before drawing conclusions, we must remain calm, we must take each test one by one, and [en Autriche] It will be a different tarmac, different types of corners as well and the picture will probably be completely different.”
“Nothing lasts forever in F1 today and that means it’s not clear that one team is better than the other. The most important thing at a circuit like Barcelona is to maintain the potential of the tires throughout the tour in the different turns”, he continued. “It’s likely that we missed something on this point, because we were two tenths off. But with 14 corners in Barcelona, we don’t lose a hundredth per corner. We lost a tenth per lap twice and the rest of the tour was a copy and paste of Lando’s times [Norris].”
It should be remembered that last year in Austria, Charles Leclerc narrowly missed out on pole position, by four hundredths of a second behind Max Verstappen. In the race, the Monegasque finished second, five seconds behind the Dutchman at the end of the 71 laps of the event.
