Charles on row three, carlos with work to do

Scuderia Ferrari HP drivers Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz will start the Dutch Grand Prix from the third and sixth row respectively. Overall, it’s not a particularly satisfactory result, but looked at in the context of a Zandvoort weekend it takes on a different perspective. Even if his car was not as competitive as the three others that he has been fighting this season, Charles got the most out of it to secure sixth place on the grid which means he can aim to bring home plenty of points. Carlos paid dearly for getting hardly any dry running because of a gearbox problem in the second free practice session yesterday and then in the shortened session this morning, following Logan Sargeant’s violent crash, from which he thankfully emerged unscathed. After getting his first experience of the Softs in Q1, Carlos still almost managed to make it to Q2, missing out on the final phase by just 69 thousandths, and so he starts eleventh on row six.

Q2 and Q3. A lap on new Softs towards the end of Q1 saw Carlos and Charles make the cut to Q2 knowing it would be fought out to the nearest thousandth. In the closing minutes, they both ran a new set of the softest tyres with Leclerc posting a good 1’10”689 which saw him through to Q3 comfortably enough, while Sainz, with a 1’10”914 was the first to miss out on the final phase. For this, Leclerc first went out on the Softs he had used in Q2, setting an encouraging 1’10”758 before pitting for another set of new Softs, getting down to 1’10”758, to secure his spot on the third row.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow’s 72 lap, 306.587 km race should take place under clear skies in cooler temperatures than in recent days. This evening the team will analyse all the options, but the most obvious strategy is a one-stop, given how much time is lost in the Zandvoort pit lane where the usual speed limit is reduced to 60 km/h. Given Carlos’ starting position, the team could try something different with him, but the aim for tomorrow is clear: it is hard to imagine any major upsets in the order, so it will be a case of getting the best possible points haul from a Dutch Grand Prix that looks like being an uphill struggle.

Charles Leclerc #16

We knew it would be a tough one today and we maximized our qualifying with P6, but that doesn’t satisfy us. We are quite a bit off the pace of our competitors and we are working night and day as a team to close that gap. I am sure the effort will pay off soon.

The target for me tomorrow will be to keep our position and bring as many points home as possible.

Carlos Sainz #55

I’m obviously not happy with how things are going this weekend. Before this session I’d hardly done any laps with the slick tyre so it was always going to be very difficult to do a perfect qualifying around this tricky track. Then, in Q2, traffic around the high speed section didn’t help either and missing Q3 by less than a tenth hurts.

In general, we are struggling with the car this weekend, but points are given out tomorrow and I’ll try to do my best to recover.

Fred Vasseur Team Principal Scuderia Ferrari HP

We were expecting a tough weekend here in Zandvoort. Last year it was one of our worst races, mainly because of the configuration of the track and we have not brought any upgrades this weekend. In the end, we have secured a respectable position on the grid with Charles and we will have our chance to fight for good points tomorrow, although a podium finish will be difficult unless something happens in front. But it’s important to score as many points as possible, because we have seen so far this season that teams can go up and down and when you have a difficult weekend like we are having here, we must still try to get the best result we can. There will be tracks that suit us better in the remaining races and we will also make progress with the car soon. 

With Carlos, it’s been a bit more difficult, as he went into quali having been unable to do any laps on the Soft tyre yesterday and when the gaps are so small, this is the result and he missed out on Q3 by less than a tenth. I expect Carlos to get back on the pace quite early in the race tomorrow. Tonight we will have a good look at what we can do to help him in terms of strategy and tyres.