The Monegasque’s annoyance at fourth place in the Sprint qualifying. But then he remains motivated for the rest of the weekend: “We need to improve tire management because McLaren has made a big step forward. However, we are strong on pace.” Vasseur: “I also see positive aspects”
The excellent feeling found in the morning’s free practice in Miami and the good start in the afternoon’s sprint qualifying seemed to direct Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari towards the dream of a pole position or, at least, a front row ahead of the short race on Saturday. But the Monegasque from the red, despite the major updates brought by the team to the SF-26 during the American weekend, had to settle for a fourth position behind Lando Norris, Kimi Antonelli and Oscar Piastri. The decent result, which will allow him to start in the second row, was not enough to contain the anger of the Ferrari driver, enraged at the end of the last flying lap and frustrated by the final result which Leclerc himself defined as “horrendous” speaking to his engineer Bryan Bozzi via radio at the end of qualifying.
smudging
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What angered the Monegasque was above all the only attempt made in SQ3, where a slip in the stretch between turns 11 and turn 16 made the attempt to snatch the front row in vain, resulting in him accumulating a delay of almost four tenths at the end of the lap (+0.370 from Norris’s pole position). Although the time was decidedly better than that of his teammate Lewis Hamilton, seventh with more than seven tenths of a disadvantage from the first position, Leclerc ended his Saturday in a sign of bitterness, behind not only Antonelli’s Mercedes – which, he had already admitted upon his arrival in Miami, it would be difficult to get close to with these updates – but also McLaren, greatly improved thanks to the developments brought to America after the four-week stop.
reaction
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Regarding the rest of the weekend, however, Leclerc immediately got up combatively: “We need to work before qualifying for the race because our race pace is strong and we can go well. During the session we had some problems with the tyres, the medium was fine while there wasn’t a good feeling with the softs. We need to try to improve this aspect because McLaren has made a big step forward.” And once the disappointment of a Friday that could have brought more joy to the red has been overcome, the team’s minds are already turned to a particularly important Saturday for the team.
VASSEUR SPEAKS
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The result of the sprint qualifying does not overly worry the team, which arrived in Miami with eleven different innovations on the Ferrari after a four-week break which was fundamental for the development of the SF-26. The team principal of the red Fred Vasseur focused on this point at the end of qualifying: “There’s a bit of frustration because this morning we were first and second – he admitted to the microphones of Sky Sport F1 – but now we’ve finished fourth. We need to understand what we did wrong because we weren’t able to put everything together at the end of qualifying. However, there are some positive aspects that need to be underlined because the potential is there and this is encouraging in view of the rest of the weekend”. The weak point remains, according to Vasseur, the deficit at power unit level compared to the Mercedes-powered ones, waiting to be able to exploit the Aduo – the performance balancing mechanism that the Federation will grant starting from the Monaco GP to the constructors’ teams in difficulty – and attempt to fill this gap: “Even today we lost a couple of tenths on the straight – explained Vasseur – but it’s not just a question of the engine, it’s a question of the package. The deficit on the straight is less evident in the race configuration, which means that tomorrow anything can happen and we can make a comeback in the sprint race, and that there will be opportunities in the race. But we also need to fix the energy delivery and every detail, because today we showed that when we manage to put everything together we are up there.”
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