Ferrari Sporting Director gives verdict on qualifying at Spa in Belgium. Ferrari Sporting Director on qualifying at Spa .

As a result of a perfect show of teamwork, Scuderia Ferrari Spanish driver Carlos Sainz secured the right to start from pole position in the Belgian Grand Prix on Sunday afternoon at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit.

Saturday’s qualifying session in Belgium was in fact heavily affected by the several penalties which seven F1 drivers out of 20 will have to take on the starting grid in Spa.

These included Max Verstappen, who set the day’s fastest lap, and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, who will start the Belgium Grand Prix from 16th place. But the greatest beneficiary of this situation was the other Scuderia Ferrari driver, Carlos Sainz, who did an excellent job to make the most of the potential of his F1-75 challenger and end the qualifying session ahead of the second Red Bull driver, Sergio Perez.

Scuderia Ferrari Sporting Director Laurent Mekies gives verdict on the qualifying session at Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium:

“It was a very intense and complex qualifying. We had very strong opponents this afternoon, especially Verstappen. But at the end of the day neither Max nor Charles were able to fight for a place on the front row because they both have a PU penalty so we could do our proper qualifying work only with Carlos. It was very tight and it took quite a bit of teamwork – with Charles and Carlos towing each other – to be able to extract the last thousands of a second to get Carlos on P1 for tomorrow. They did a super job together and the team supported them well with a perfect execution. With Charles the priority was to beat the other cars that also had PU penalties today, and ultimately we decided at the last moment to run him on a new set of soft tyres in Q3 to secure the highest position possible. It still leaves him with a very healthy new tyre allocation for tomorrow to battle strongly through the field. It will be an intense race for Carlos, who will have to use all his skills to defend first position. I’m sure that we will have the chance to bring home lots of points.” – the Ferrari Sporting Director explained, as reported by the Maranello team’s official website after the qualifying session at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit on Saturday.