Qualifying for the British Grand Prix proved to be tougher than expected for Scuderia Ferrari HP. Tomorrow, Carlos Sainz will start from seventh place on the fourth row of the grid, while Charles was quickest of those who failed to make the cut out of Q2 and will therefore line up in eleventh place. It was a chaotic qualifying, complicated by a damp track at the start which dried progressively once the rain eased at the end of Q1.
Evolution and disappointment. All drivers started off on Intermediate tyres as the track was wet, but after one run, it became clear the track was drying and so everyone switched to Soft tyres and started putting in the laps as the track improved. Carlos and Charles got through Q1 and set off again in Q2 with two sets each of Softs available. Carlos posted a 1’26”842 which put him through to Q3, but Charles could do no better than a 1’27”097, partly because of a mistake at turn 13. He was 11th fastest which meant his qualifying session ended there. Carlos had two sets of new Softs available for Q3, starting off with a 1’26”509, which was good enough for seventh place, but he failed to improve on his second set. In the last few minutes, the Spaniard was unable to warm up his tyres properly because of slow traffic leaving pit lane and that meant he had to push so as not to take the chequered flag before starting his flying lap and he had to fight for track position with Oscar Piastri and Fernando Alonso. None of the drivers behind him improved, so Carlos stayed in seventh place.
The race. Tomorrow’s Grand Prix gets underway at 15.00 local (16 CEST) and it will definitely be a tricky and open one, given the uncertainty over the weather and the fact the SF-24s are further back than usual on the grid. A good strategy and a race executed better than today’s qualifying could still produce an acceptable points haul.
I gave it everything out there but we knew Silverstone was going to be a tough track for us. The conditions were also very tricky so qualifying today was even more challenging.
With hindsight, I think we could have left the garage a bit earlier for the last run, as the out-lap was messy, fighting for position with other cars and the tyres were not in the right window before the last push. Anyhow, we need to keep working to try and close the gap because our performance was not great overall.
Still, the points are given out tomorrow, so I look forward to the race, which could be interesting with the weather.
Not an easy qualifying. Our main goal is assessing our situation as we have been struggling for a few weekends now.
We did the right thing by splitting the configurations across our cars yesterday and we gained valuable insights that will be beneficial in the long term. However, by focusing on these tests, you may not optimise your weekend as a whole and that’s what happened today in qualifying.
We are working on understanding in which direction we have to push to bounce back as soon as possible.
Fred Vasseur, Team Principal Scuderia Ferrari HP
I think today we didn’t execute qualifying well enough and that meant we were unable to put everything together. We decided to move to the old spec for today as there was more bouncing with the new one and with the high speed corners we have at Silverstone, the trade-off of fitting the new parts wasn’t positive enough.
In Q2 there were nine cars in one tenth and the track evolved considerably. Carlos made the cut to the final part, but Charles made a mistake in turn 13 that meant he didn’t make it to Q3. The last phase was also messy as Carlos was able to put together a decent lap on his first set but then we were slowed by traffic at the second attempt and he had to fight for track positions with Oscar Piastri and Fernando Alonso and couldn’t prepare the tyres in the right way.
As for the race, I think that given our grid positions, if it rains then the race might be more chaotic and that could suit us better than a dry afternoon. We need to nail our strategy and execute the race perfectly if we want to bring home a decent points haul.