The head of the Ferrari pit wall tried to mitigate the criticisms after a rather disappointing Friday for the SF-23.
Difficult Comeback
It wasn’t a smooth comeback from the break at Zandvoort for Ferrari. The two SF-23 cars of Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc, in fact, encountered several challenges in the two free practice sessions held today at the Dutch track. In the afternoon session, the one most representative in terms of timing and temperatures for tomorrow’s qualifying and Sunday’s race, the two Prancing Horse cars didn’t even manage to enter the top 10.
The Monegasque driver finished in 11th place and was even beaten, among the Ferrari-powered cars, by Valtteri Bottas who came ninth with Alfa Romeo. Carlos Sainz had an even worse day, ending up in the 16th position.
Day Dedicated to Testing
Attempting to calm the situation was the red team’s principal, Frederic Vasseur, who, speaking to Sky Sport F1, implied that the Cavallino’s box mainly focused on ‘test’ solutions that are also useful for the rest of the season. “I believe that tomorrow we will see a different Ferrari,” declared the French manager, in his first season as Maranello’s team principal. “Today, the situation was a bit complicated; we tested various things in the morning and also in the afternoon. This means we focused more on these aspects than on the performance itself.” – the French manager pointed out.
Encouraging Race Pace
Fred Vasseur draws courage from the unity that emerged across the grid, inevitably favored by the compactness of the Zandvoort circuit, the shortest on the world championship calendar after Monaco. “There were five to ten cars within a few tenths, and we need to put everything together for tomorrow,” Vasseur added. “I think we made a good step forward in our approach to the weekend today, and we’re confident. The limitations were in putting everything together on this track; there was a significant difference between the drivers from turn to turn. We saw, for example, that Hamilton was three-tenths faster than us only in one corner, so we need to understand the situation to optimize things, but we’re not far off.” – he continued.
“We didn’t run with more aerodynamic load because that was one of the components we had to test. After the last few races, we didn’t have any tests,” Fred Vasseur continued. “We only have simulators and the wind tunnel. So, we decided to use Friday for testing to cover all the work we needed in terms of wing adjustments for an overall view, and we did that properly with Robert and Charles. Everything went according to plan. We believe there’s room for improvement in terms of setup. The race pace was good. We were missing a few tenths in the qualifying simulation throughout the session, but we’re not worried,” concluded the Ferrari team principal.
