After a promising qualifying session, at the end of which Charles Leclerc took pole position, Scuderia Ferrari say they only lacked race pace when running behind other cars in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. Charles Leclerc scored pole during a heavily disrupted qualifying session, as team mate Carlos Sainz crashed heavily, bringing Q3 to a premature close, but qualified fifth.
During the race, Charles Leclerc was passed by the Red Bull cars and Lewis Hamilton‘s Mercedes. He also lost out to Sebastian Vettel and Pierre Gasly, ending the race fourth after Verstappen’s retirement and Hamilton’s error at the final restart.
Scuderia Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto admitted they “were expecting something better after quali”, though they foresaw a difficult start to the race on the soft tyre compound.
“We knew that on the soft we would have struggled,” said Binotto. “As a matter of fact, we struggled the most with the soft. I think on the hard tyres, when in free air, I think that Carlos’ pace in free air was representative. We were competitive.”
While Carlos Sainz’s lap times did not match those of leader Verstappen, who was running in the mid-1’45s, the Spanish driver reached the low 1’46s. This compared well with the team’s main rival this season, McLaren, whose cars were lapping in the mid-1’46s.
“Certainly we still need to improve our pace in the race, no doubt. But I don’t think that overall we were poor in performance today, when in free air. So we suffering the dirty air and that’s where we need to focus our analysis.” – the Ferrari boss added.
Leave a Reply