Ferrari on the attack
Many expected Ferrari’s best opportunity to secure a victory this season to come at Monaco, but surprisingly the Scuderia may have an even stronger chance in Barcelona. Throughout Friday’s running, the SF-26 demonstrated encouraging long-run pace in the hands of Charles Leclerc, while a resurgent Lewis Hamilton secured a front-row start in qualifying on Saturday, giving the seven-time world champion a realistic shot at battling for victory against the Mercedes pair of George Russell — who claimed pole position — and Andrea Kimi Antonelli, who will start third on the grid.
Charles Leclerc, meanwhile, faces a much tougher challenge after his crash at the beginning of Q3. The Monegasque driver will line up only tenth on the grid and will need a strong recovery drive if he hopes to fight his way back through the field.
Vasseur already focused on race strategy
Speaking to Sky after qualifying, Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur was already looking ahead to what he expects will be a highly demanding Spanish Grand Prix.
“The pace was good, but it will be a difficult race. There will be more than 50 degrees on the track and everything, or almost everything, will be determined by tyre management. We will need to keep the tyres alive and manage the strategy well. We had good pace, but the degradation was high — for us and for everyone else. Today there was a gap of one or two tenths between the cars, but one or two tenths is also the degradation delta from one lap to the next,” he explained.
Fred Vasseur also admitted that he did not arrive at qualifying with any specific expectations regarding Ferrari’s potential result.
“I don’t spend Friday and Saturday expecting something in particular. Instead, I focus on doing the best possible job throughout the weekend and extracting the maximum from the car. At one stage in Q2 there were four or five cars covered by only a couple of tenths, so making predictions was impossible. Today we managed to improve from Q1 to Q3 and that was a key aspect,” he said.
When asked whether this was the strongest Ferrari package of the season so far, the Frenchman preferred to remain cautious: “I don’t know. What is certain is that we have the smallest qualifying gap to Mercedes that we’ve had all year,” the French manager replied.
Confidence in the SF-26’s potential
Despite his measured approach, the Ferrari boss expressed clear confidence in the capabilities of the SF-26 and its prospects for the remainder of the season.
“I think this Ferrari can win races and when you start from the front row you always have to think about winning. It will be an exciting challenge because the other teams will also bring upgrades. We need to make the most of this moment, stay focused on what we are doing, extract the maximum from the package we have and continue improving both the chassis and the power unit when we are able to start taking advantage of the ADUO,” concluded Frederic Vasseur.
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