Marc Gene confident ' Charles Leclerc's pace start gives us hope"

Yesterday morning the only free practice session for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix took place along the Baku track. During the 60 minutes of activity, the former Ferrari test driver and ex-Formula 1 driver, Marc Genè, commented the events for Sky Sport F1 Italy and shared his thoughts on the performances shown by Scuderia Ferrari during the activity that the two drivers, Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz, had carried out up to that point.

The Spaniard then focused on discussing the developments that Red Bull has brought specifically for this weekend compared to those of the Maranello-based team. Below are some of his comments.

Marc Genè’s view on FP1 at the Baku City Circuit
Marc Genè began his comment for Sky Sport F1 Italy by pointing out that “Charles’ work is positive, also because we think that the hard tire is about half a second away from the medium one, which means we are not so far from Max, but obviously it depends on what work you do and in my opinion, it will be very complicated to prepare both qualifying and race today.”

The Spaniard then added: “Carlos is also lucky not to have broken the steering arm earlier in the contact, otherwise he would have ruined his whole weekend.”

Speaking instead of the updates brought by the other teams, and in particular by Red Bull, Marc Genè continued: “As for Red Bull, you have to be very sure that the new components you bring give you an advantage because it is the only team that has done so. We at Ferrari prefer to bring things when we can make comparisons during a normal free practice session. I am surprised by Red Bull’s choice, but they obviously had all the data before making this decision” – the Spaniard believes.

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The Sky commentator then concluded his live intervention from the Maranello Remote Garage by talking about the uncertainty that exists during this weekend due to just one free practice session before this afternoon’s qualifying. He revealed that “many will start without having tried a long run, perhaps the real test will be tomorrow during the sprint race and this will help understand how Sunday’s GP will be. I must also say that I had never seen a queue during FP1. Usually, everyone wants the track to be cleaned first, but now everyone is taking advantage of every single available second, and I expect a competitive Ferrari because I think the track will be good for us. How good we’ll see, but Charles’ pace gives us hope.” – Marc Gene concluded.