IMOLA, Italy (AP) — Ferrari drivers are confident the latest improvements to their cars have worked as expected, even though Red Bull and McLaren stayed ahead of the Italian team in qualifying for the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix.
After McLaren’s clear step forward in Miami, Ferrari arrived at its home race at Imola with seven performance-related upgrades to its car, adding redesigned sidepods and a new floor.
Ahead of the race weekend, speculation is circulating on social media that the upgrade could be worth just as 0. 4 seconds per lap, a gain that would have put Ferrari in competition with Red Bull’s Max Verstappen for pole position.
However, Carlos Sainz, who qualified fifth, 0. 487sec behind Verstappen, said those figures were never realistic.
“It worked exactly as we expected,” he said. Unfortunately, I don’t know how to explain why everyone expected us to fly this weekend with the new package. “
“I noticed that there were figures circulating in our package that in those days did not coincide at all with reality: to get 0. 1 seconds is a team task.
“I’m not saying we got 0. 1 seconds, 0. 2 seconds or 0. 05 seconds, but those aren’t the numbers other people were mentioning. And with that in mind, it was going to be tricky to make the leap this weekend because other people are also improving their cars here.
Team-mate Charles Leclerc qualified fifth (0. 224sec behind Verstappen) and while he said the upgrade worked as expected, he is confident the team will be able to squeeze more functionality out of him in the coming races.
“Of course we can’t be completely satisfied, but the smart thing is that the upgrade is doing exactly what is expected,” Leclerc said. “So it’s a smart sign, but on a track like this, maybe we haven’t quite noticed. “The benefits of the upgrade still and we haven’t achieved our goal of being on pole.
“We have to wait and see a few races before judging the upgrades, because we wouldn’t possibly be running in the optimal window for this new package and all that. So I’m sure I have a better chance of unlocking. “
“Was today worse than expected? Probably a little bit, we were hoping to be a little bit closer, but the season is still long, we still have a lot of concepts on how to extract more from this package and I’m sure. ” We will do it in the coming years. Racing and that will be for the rest of the season.
Sainz admitted that McLaren now has an advantage over Ferrari in terms of single-lap performance, but believes circuits with other characteristics, such as Monaco and Canada, which will be next on the [F1] calendar, can turn in the opposite direction.
“McLaren had [a qualifying advantage] in Miami, it’s only because of the soft tyres that they struggled in Miami,” Sainz said. “If you looked at the lap times they were doing with the mediums in the board qualifying and in the race in particular, they were 0. 2 seconds or 0. 3 seconds faster than us and then we got to a McLaren circuit, which is Imola.
“It was going to be tricky to beat McLaren here, they were 0. 1sec ahead of Charles and 0. 3sec ahead of me.
“So I was pretty sure it would be a McLaren track and hopefully there will be Ferrari tracks where we can challenge them.