The choice made today by Ferrari in qualifying for the Austrian Grand Prix will be judged at the end of the 71 laps scheduled for tomorrow at the Red Bull Ring. Seen in this way, a qualifying session ended in eleventh and twelfth positions seems like a nightmare verdict, which brings Ferrari back to the difficulties of twelve months ago. But the failure of Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc in Q3 is mainly due to a strategic choice made by the Maranello engineers in view of the race.
With the soft tires, which this weekend are the C5 compound (the softest of the Pirelli range), both Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz today would have had access to the top-10, but with a perspective that is anything but reassuring in view of the race.
The long-runs on Friday confirmed that with the soft tires the SF21 suffers a significant degradation after a few laps, and hence the decision to exclude this compound from the plans ahead of Sunday. The reasons behind the choice of Ferrari are clear, but at the start of tomorrow’s race (after the penalty that relegated Sebastian Vettel between the two red SF21 cars) there will be only three drivers who will start with soft tires, namely Stroll, Tsunoda and Gasly.
The impression is that both Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz will start the race with a set of hard tires, to try (if the pace continues to be good) a hypothetical overcut also on some opponents who will start with medium tires, first of all George Russell.
The Williams English driver, able to pass the Q2 cut with medium tires and finish the standings in ninth position, left a bit of a bitter taste in the mouth of the two Ferrari drivers: “We expected not to enter Q3 – admitted Charles – but not to finish Q2 behind a Williams with the same tires”.
The performance of the two Ferrari cars was influenced by the rise in temperatures (the qualifying took place with the asphalt at 52 degrees), which most likely contributed to not perfectly hitting the window of use for the medium tires.
A race on which Ferrari has bet a lot for Sunday, accepting to expose itself to disappointing evaluations at the end of qualifying: “Our race pace has been solid so far – commented Charles Leclerc – and we have the advantage of being able to choose which tires to start with. Now we have to analyze all the data with the utmost attention and decide on the best strategy for tomorrow, also considering that there are several cars ahead of us that will have the Medium tire. This further complicates the situation but I think we can still be protagonists of an attacking race.”
A scenario that Charles faced seven days ago, managing to recover from last to seventh place. It will certainly not be a walk in the park, the one awaiting the two Ferrari drivers tomorrow, and a first variable will obviously be linked to the conditions of the track.
In light of the choices made, Ferrari hopes that the clouds will stay far away from Spielberg, and that the track temperature remains below fifty degrees. The rest will be decided by the dynamics of the race, but as happened last week, the final evaluations will come only after the checkered flag.
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