In France the qualifying had deceived Scuderia Ferrari, while the race had left the Maranello team with a disappointing outcome. In Austria, on the other hand, for the first of two consecutive weekends at the Red Bull Ring track, the Maranello team began to struggle as early as Saturday. If this translates into a new reversal of the situation on Sunday – this time in favor of Ferrari – it is too early to tell. Certainly, however, the sporting director of Ferrari, Laurent Mekies, commenting on the qualifying day, admitted that the intent of the team was to give priority to speed on race day.
“A qualifying session tougher than expected? Yes. Charles did what he could with his performance. For Carlos, however, it was an elimination for a few tenths. We have concentrated on race pace this weekend – admitted Laurent Mekies in an interview for Sky Sport F1 – this is the right year to do so. We’ll see if tomorrow we can be more effective in the race than last week “. If Ferrari is crying today, certainly its customer teams, Alfa Romeo and Haas, are not laughing. Laurent Mekies acknowledged that the Maranello power unit is showing some power deficits.
“We don’t hide from the fact that this is an 80% engine track. We have made progress on the engine, but we are not where we want to be. The key for us is to keep learning in order to be more solid.” – clarified the Ferrari sporting director.
Finally, Laurent Mekies explained a problem highlighted also by Charles Leclerc. In fact, according to the Monegasque driver, the SF21 suffers more when opening the DRS: “These are choices we make to compromise between the race and qualifying. We hope to recover tomorrow. It’s a choice. We want to have a stronger race pace. With Carlos Sainz we can play on strategy, we will see where we will be tomorrow “, concluded the French manager.
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