Scuderia Ferrari HP drivers Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz will start tomorrow’s Gran Premio del Made in Italy e dell’Emilia Romagna from third and fourth places on the grid. Once again in Imola, qualifying was incredibly tight and, in the end, it did not produce the result the team and the fans were hoping for. The race does not look like being an easy one, but making it to the podium with both SF-24s is still a realistic goal.
Q3. Having brilliantly got through the first two parts, Charles and Carlos had two sets of new Soft tyres each for Q3. On his first run, Charles stopped the clocks in 1’15”016, while Carlos did a 1’15”363. They both improved on their second run, Charles getting under the 1’15 barrier with a 1’14”970, with Carlos lapping in 1’15”233, both slower than Max Verstappen. Crossing the line after the Ferrari pair came the McLarens of Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris who got ahead of both SF-24s that were thus relegated to the second and third rows. However, a three place penalty for the Australian then ensured it was an all-Ferrari second row of the grid.
Race. The race starts at 15.00 CEST tomorrow, run over 63 laps (309.049 km) on a track where overtaking is far from easy. However, looking at the past couple of days a one-stop strategy no longer looks like the only option. The run-off areas have reverted to gravel for this year which could see cars beached there, thus bringing out the Safety Car. This scenario already played out in today’s Formula 2 and Formula 3 races and so could also play a part tomorrow. Being ready to grab any opportunity that presents itself could change the way the race is played out.
We didn’t achieve our target today and we have to look in to where we can improve for the upcoming races, given that in the past few we have had the most margin for improvement in the first sector during qualifying. Our competitors seem to have been holding back on their full potential until today and their step was bigger than ours from yesterday to today. Our upgrade package is working as expected and it will take a few sessions to find the optimal window where we can extract the most performance. Our strength this year has been our race pace and we will give everything in the race tomorrow to make our tifosi proud.
Charles Leclerc #16
We knew that coming here it would be very tight. I struggled to be consistent with the Soft and didn’t do my best Quali to be honest, but we are still in a decent position to fight tomorrow and although overtaking in Imola is not easy, it can also be a race full of opportunities and we need to be fully focused.
We’ll fight right to the chequered flag to put on a great show for our tifosi and hopefully thank them for their support with a good team result.
Carlos Sainz #55
We knew it would be a tough and tight session, where one tenth could have made the difference for many places and it was the case. Unfortunately today we were at the back of that “one-tenth” group. Overall it was quite a strange qualifying: we were competitive in the practice sessions and also this afternoon until Q3, where we did not progress as expected. We cannot be happy with the final outcome as here overtaking is quite difficult and I would have preferred to have been further up the grid, but we also have to consider that the gap between us and McLaren is very tight.
The most important day is tomorrow when we will be looking to score as many points as possible. Last year we were used to having good Saturdays and then struggling a bit on the Sunday and this season so far it has generally been the opposite. Looking at the race pace it seems that we are quite ok with it and I hope we can give our tifosi an interesting race. They have supported us come what may and they deserve a good result
Fred Vasseur Team Principal Scuderia Ferrari HP