Scuderia Ferrari drivers Sebastian Vettel and Charles Leclerc admitted that the FIA’s planned ban on high-performance qualifying engine modes won’t affect them but could present problems for their rivals.
She sport’s governing body intends to force teams to use the same engine modes in qualifying and the race. They hope to enforce the restriction from the next round of the championship at Spa-Francorchamps. Charles Leclerc said the restriction can only help Ferrari.
“To be honest I don’t think it will affect us so much, so I think it can only be positive for us. How much it will be beneficial it’s still to see. But for us I can say that we don’t have anything different from quali to the race so for us I don’t think it will change anything.”- the Monegasque driver explained.
Sebastian Vettel agreed the restriction is more likely to affect Ferrari’s rivals.
“As Charles says it doesn’t affect us this season so let’s wait and see what happens,” he said. “I think it always depends what you are able to pull off. I guess if you have something developed on your engine that you can normally run a certain amount of mileage with more power or more stress on the engine it’s probably not the best news. But from where we are right now as Charles says it doesn’t affect us.”- he explained.
Ferrari’s engine customers should also stand to benefit from the change. Alfa Romeo driver Kimi Raikkonen said his team “don’t have any” quali modes so the change “makes no difference” to them, but they can see how much of an advantage their rivals gain in qualifying.
“Obviously we can see that if you take practice or something what happens then in the qualifying there seems to take quite a big hit behind the others, they seem to have a lot of straight-line speed suddenly,” said Raikkonen.
“But that’s out of our hands. We have what we have and we try to make the best out of it so we’ll see what comes out.”
Leave a Reply