Ferrari still not happy despite ‘positive’ Canadian Grand Prix

Leclerc, Sainz and Vasseur recognise that they need to progress more despite having a “positive” Canadian Grand Prix.

Ferrari impressed many at the Canadian Grand Prix. They pulled off an impressive overcut strategy which saw Leclerc and Sainz finish in fourth and fifth, despite starting in tenth and eleventh respectively. Their impressive race day result indicates that the Scuderia could be on their way up once more, however, their failings during Saturday’s qualifying have shown there is still a long way to go.

Qualifying

The wet qualifying in Montreal caused havoc for all teams involved with the rain coming and going unpredictably. Unfortunately, Ferrari didn’t handle the situation well strategically, leading to some harsh words from Charles Leclerc.

“We can’t afford those mistakes again”

Leclerc wanted to change to slicks, whereas the team told him to stay out. This call proved to be incorrect and Leclerc failed to get into Q3. In the meantime, Alex Albon topped the session having had his Williams on slicks since the beginning.

Fred Vasseur also noted that the team had a bad Saturday session stating in Ferrari’s review that it was a “poor qualifying session”.

The Race

Ferrari was a lot more positive after Sunday’s session.

Leclerc said, “It was a solid race that confirmed the good feeling I had in the car on Friday.” He also revealed that he believes P4 was the best possible result he could have imagined. “We couldn’t have done better than P4 today considering where we started.”

Carlos Sainz also shared Leclerc’s sentiment saying that the race was a “positive” one.

“Today was a positive race. We were able to push continuously and recover after a challenging qualifying. We made the right strategy calls and we had a strong pace, especially with the Medium tyre.”

Moving Forward

Frederic Vasseur, Ferrari Team Principal, has made it clear that he wants to keep working. Despite recovering well, Vasseur wants the whole weekend to run smoothly.

“We will continue to focus on working solidly on the course we have set ourselves, while going into every small detail to ensure we can have a perfect weekend from Friday through to Sunday.”

Leclerc wants to see how the car performs in the next round, Austria, as Canada is a slight anomaly of a track.

“We must not forget that this is quite an unusual track [Circuit Gilles Villenueve], so we will keep pushing to reconfirm these positive steps in Austria.”

On a very interesting note Vasseur, in his weekend review, pointed out that the Ferraris were lapping at similar times to the top three towards the end of the race.

“It was notable that in the second half, our drivers were matching the lap times of the top three.”

Does this mean Ferrari could finally make their way back to the top?

Feature Image Credit: Getty Images